Pick one audience you can actually serve, not everyone with a pulse

Open your customer list in HubSpot or a Google Sheets tab. Pick the five customers you most enjoyed working with, who got the best result and who paid without fuss.

For each one, write the role, company size, industry, the situation that made them buy and the result they wanted. Look for what repeats. That overlap is your first draft of an audience, and it comes from real people rather than a guess.

Use this template: "[Role] at [type of company] who is [situation] and wants [outcome]." A filled-in example: "Heads of demand generation at software companies with 20 to 100 people who are told to double pipeline with the same team."

If the sentence needs the word "or", pick one side. If it describes everyone in a country or industry, add a situation. The situation is what makes the person recognise themselves.

Write down up to three audiences and score each from 1 to 5 on three questions:

• Can I help them better than most alternatives?
• Do they have a budget and an owner for this problem?
• Can I reach them in a place I can visit weekly?

Add the scores. Pick the highest. If two tie, pick the one where you already know more people, because a warm start beats a slightly better market.

Spend an hour listing the exact phrases this person uses for the problem. Take them from calls, emails, reviews and communities. Keep a running note in Notion. These phrases become your headlines and openings later. Mine the words your customers already use explains where to find them, and Write to one person shows how to use them in copy.

Before you commit, talk to ten people who fit the sentence. Ask what they are trying to fix this quarter and how they do it today. If seven or more describe your problem in their own words, the audience is real. If fewer than five do, change the situation part of your sentence and try again. Who to interview helps you pick people, and Schedule recurring interview rounds turns it into a habit.

Under your sentence, write the groups you will not serve for now. For example: solo consultants, large enterprises, students. When a request comes in from one of them, point them to a free resource and move on.

The no list stops you from widening the audience by accident. Every adjacent group you add dilutes the signal that draws in your core.

Publish only for this audience for ninety days. Then review. Widening before that is usually restlessness, not evidence. After you have picked who, choose where with Pick the channel where your audience already gathers, and go deep on one.

• Defining the audience by industry alone.
• Choosing the biggest market instead of the one you serve best.
• Naming an audience and then writing generic content for it.
• Skipping the conversations and trusting your own picture of the buyer.
• Reopening the choice every few weeks.

• A stranger in your audience reads your headline and says "that is me".
• Your leads come from the same kind of person and company.
• People in the audience share your posts with colleagues in the same role.
• You can write ten post ideas in ten minutes, because you know their problems.
• You say no to a lead outside the sentence without feeling bad about it.