Target audience: the whole world

Many of us often come up with new ideas. Sites, programs, services, ready business, a startup, finally. It often happens that the idea seems to be aimed at any person. Or, say, your potential audience is “from 20 to 40, active mobile Internet users”. These are hundreds of millions of people.



In any marketing how-to, you will find a statement that the target audience should be defined as clearly and as compactly as possible. And here the template begins to pop: how is that? My wonderful product is needed by everyone. Why, instead of 100 million users, they suggest that I limit my wonderful business to a “three and a half person” circle, thereby losing 99% of the potential profit?







The target audience is not a circle that limits the audience of your product. This is the most convenient and affordable compact group of potential customers, through which you can bring your product to the market. Once again, in other words: everyone really needs your product. But it’s easier to reach everyone through a limited audience. You should work with this audience as described in the textbooks on marketing.

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Probably, there is no better example than social networks. What is the general purpose social media audience? Yes, all the people in the world. From junior high school students to centenarian grandmothers of almost any country. And how to reach such an audience? We all know a great example - facebook. We remember well how he grew up.



If your product is really useful and universal, it means that it is useful and needed by hundreds of millions of unremarkable people, and hundreds of Afro-Russians from South Butovo, for example. Present the product to these guys so that they feel - this is done for them. If you managed to capture their attention - they will help you to increase the audience by an order. And so on, until you capture the whole world.



Of course, now you should go down from heaven to earth and understand that this is not a silver bullet. No one will give you guarantees that everything will turn out. Moreover, each person you meet will be able to find for you a thousand objective reasons why your idea “will not fly”. The sad world statistics of "success" of startups is proof of this. However, it is worth remembering that only the one who does nothing is not mistaken. Just try it.