What’s wrong with having your target audience be wide? Big group = more potential customers = more money. Right?

Nope.

It’s hair-pullingly (not a word!) counterintuitive, but the wider you define your target audience, the fewer customers you’ll get. And inversely, the smaller a niche you define yourself in, the more customers you will attract. Why?

Reason #1: Customers aren’t passionate about big categories. I don’t think of myself as a shoe buyer, although I am one, obviously. I think of myself as a buyer of Doc Martens loafers with the sweet canvas print that is so awesome that complete strangers have stopped me in the street to ask where I got them from. If you say you sell shoes I won’t care. But limited-edition Doc Martens? Ooh ooh ooh I want them.

Reason #2: Most customers shop around, and if your website offers the same products as the other 5 websites they visit, they’ll choose randomly. (Bookies like 1 in 6 odds, but you don’t.) Worse, they’ll choose based on price and then you’ll get sucked into the downward spiral of price wars to win business.

Reason #3: No-one can be the expert on a whole field, and everyone knows it. Pick any noun that your three-year-old knows and imagine someone claiming to be an expert on it. Would you believe them? Bread? No. Dogs? No. Dirt? Heck no. You can’t know everything about a topic as large as, say, sport, but it is possible to know almost everything about the championship 1997 Newcastle Knights football team. When someone declares that they have that kind of specialised knowledge then people believe them. If you had a question about the number of offsides in the Newcastle versus Manly grand final, then who would you trust? General Sports Expert or Specific Guy?
The part that’s awesome and not particularly logical is that Specific Guy will also be trusted to be accurate in related subjects not in his niche, like football statistics, or the history of the game. I’m not sure why this happens, but I’d guess it’s because by claiming a narrow field of expertise he a) has proved he’s not a BS artist, and b) if he’s studied one area that intensely, he’s certain to have picked up more general understanding, too.

Reason #4: It makes your business more real, and the more real you are the more likely someone will be to establish a relationship with you. Picking up the phone and talking to a complete stranger is intimidating, so the more you define what you do the less you seem like a stranger. Alston Plumbing could be anyone, but if you are Alston Plumbing, The Blocked Drain Specialists, I already have a vague mental picture, something to connect to.

Reason #5: You’re looking for someone to trim your six treasured palm trees and check the Yellow Pages. There are four pages of general landscaping ads and one that says “Palm Tree Trimming”. Who you gonna call?

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

1. Grab a Post-It and write down who your customers are.
2. Tear up that Post-It and try again.
3. Make a small pile of ripped-up yellow notes until you have a definition that is meaningful, specific and actionable.
4. Stick this Post-It on the cookie jar.
5. Tell your employees, your suppliers and the world!
6. Use the information to inform your marketing decisions.