Know Your Audience (No, Actually Know Them)

Clarity

Jun 23

This post originally appeared in my Substack newsletter, The Work Behind the Work. Subscribe here.

Whenever I join a new marketing group or start a project, I run this test:

I ask three people on the team to tell me about the target audience – not by reading from a document, but by describing it in their own words, as they would to a friend over coffee, from what they remember.

If all three of them say more or less the same thing, that’s a good sign. If their answers vary – different jobs, different challenges, different levels of detail – we’ve got a clarity problem, and it will show up in everything we do.

More often than not, the answers do vary, even if only slightly. One person will describe the audience by age and basic demographics. Another will talk about company size. A third will focus on how they buy. Each of these is partly right, but none offers enough detail to make smart, creative, or strategic choices.

This is the audience definition problem, and many teams don’t realise how often it appears.

The unhelpful definition

Most of the audience definitions I see sound like this: “B2B decision-makers at medium-sized tech firms who want ways to make their work run more smoothly.”

This isn’t wrong; it just isn’t useful. It’s so broad that it could apply to thousands of companies and people. It won’t help an advertising copywriter choose between two headline ideas. It won’t help a media buyer decide between LinkedIn and a sector magazine. It won’t help the sales team decide who to contact first.

The issue is that most audience definitions are written for plans and strategy papers, where being broad is acceptable. But marketing needs detail. The space between “we help medium-sized tech firms” and “we’re trying to reach this specific person with this specific problem” is the space between marketing that feels generic and marketing that feels as if it was made just for you.

Getting to useful detail

A useful audience definition answers questions that directly affect the work. Not “who could buy this?” but “who are we speaking to right now, and what do they need to hear?”

Here’s what I ask teams to agree on:

The person, not the company. Companies don’t read your articles, go to your events, or take your sales calls; people do. Who is the actual person you’re trying to reach? What is their job title? What does a typical day look like? What meetings are they in? What are they expected to deliver in the next three months?

At one firm I worked with, we stopped talking about “people who run gaming” and started talking about “the Vice President of Slot Machines at a local casino who is under pressure to refresh the gaming floor, but can’t prove to their Chief Financial Officer that it’s worth the spend without evidence of a return.” It’s the same market, but the second version makes the opening message obvious: “Here’s how other people who run gaming proved they got a return on their last floor refresh.”

The problem they’re trying to solve. Not what your product can do – their problem. What keeps them awake at night? What is their boss asking them about? What are they typing into Google at 10 p.m. because they still can’t crack it?

When you understand the problem in their language – not your product’s language – everything becomes clearer. Content becomes more relevant; messaging, more empathetic; and the sales conversation, more of a dialogue. You move from talking about what your product can do to what the buyer needs – always a stronger approach.

Where they look for information. Which industry journals do they read, if any? Do they value LinkedIn opinion pieces or scroll past them? Are conferences still on their calendar, and if so, which ones? Do they turn to colleagues for advice, or do they prefer to do their own research?

This set of answers will shape your channel plan more than any platform stats will. If your audience gets information from three key trade magazines and from what colleagues say, a huge Instagram campaign is a waste of money, no matter how good the ads are.

What they don’t trust. Every group of people is naturally sceptical about something. Enterprise buyers don’t trust vendors who overpromise. Technical people don’t trust fluffy marketing language. Budget owners don’t trust vague claims about return on investment. Knowing what your audience won’t believe is as valuable as knowing what they do want to hear, because it tells you what not to say and how to build – not lose – trust.

The persona problem

A word on personas: they can be helpful, but they’re often made too complicated and then barely used.

I’ve seen teams spend weeks creating detailed buyer personas – giving them names, stock photos, invented backstories, hobbies, and media habits. The personas are printed, pinned to a wall, and then forgotten. They become planning artefacts, not everyday decision tools.

The problem is usually that personas have too much detail in the wrong places and not enough in the right ones. I don’t need to know that “Marketing Mary” drinks oat milk lattes and listens to NPR. I need to know what problem she’s trying to solve, how she makes decisions, and which words would persuade her to click.

If you’re going to create personas, keep them simple. Focus on useful details – role, problem, where they look for information, what they use to judge options, and typical doubts. Skip lifestyle details unless they genuinely affect what you say or which channels you choose. And, above all, use them often. A persona that lives only in the plan and never in the copy is just theatre.

How specific to be

Not every marketing task needs the same level of detail about the people you’re targeting. A campaign to raise awareness across a broad industry can work with a general view of who they are. A targeted ABM email to fifty named companies needs far more detail.

The key is to match the level of detail to the job the marketing has to do:

Awareness – a broader definition is fine. You’re trying to reach a market, not a single person. The sector, seniority level, and general challenges are usually enough.

Consideration – you need more detail. You’re trying to teach and show what makes you different. Your definition should include specific roles, problems, and the criteria they use to decide.

Decision – you need the most detail. You’re trying to win a sale. You’re speaking to a known company or a known person, and what you say should be tailored to their exact situation, concerns, and decision timeline.

Most teams, by default, use the “awareness” level of detail for everything. As a result, their “consideration” and “decision” marketing is too generic to work well. Matching your level of detail to the stage is one of the quickest ways to improve campaigns.

Making it stick

For an audience definition to matter, the team has to use it. To make that happen:

Put it in the brief. The audience definition – not a link to a document – should appear in full in every campaign brief, clearly written and impossible to miss.

Test it against the work. Before you sign anything off, ask: “If I were this specific person, would this feel relevant to me? Would it speak to my problem in a way I’d recognise?” If not, the work is off target, no matter how good it looks.

Refresh it regularly. Audiences evolve; their problems shift; new competitors change the landscape. A definition that was accurate a year ago may already be out of date. Build a review into your quarterly planning.

If your audience definition describes a million people, it’s not a definition; it’s a demographic. Be specific enough that the team can make better decisions – not just in a strategy workshop, but as they write a headline, choose an image, or decide what to share.