When I was twelve, i entered my “shark attack fandom phase”
I read (and watched) Soul Surfer once a month.
I fantasized how I’d survive a shark attack and went hunting for Megalodon teeth at the beach.
My favorite movie was, of course, Jaws.
Needless to say, my mother was concerned.
I have since given up the need to know every species of shark that is most likely to get me in my hometown (Answer, bull sharks!) to my mother’s relief.
But when something big (and unexpected) pops up in customer research data my brain autocorrects to:
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Because when you have your product or service chugging along nicely enough in one target audience, it might be time to try for another.
The worst that can happen is it’s not the right audience.
The upside is that you:
diversify
make more money
are less at risk of economic headwinds (or as I like to call it “frothiness”)
I don’t know about you, but I think it’s good to have lifeboats.
Especially when the Economy ship is looks like it’s thinking about sinking.
(cue the theme music from Titanic)
Step 1: Start looking for your white whale(s)
Start out with surveying your audience and asking them how they’re using the product and what their job title and industry is.
Tool love letter - Tally is great for these kinds of surveys because you can have a fill-in “Other” option that is immediately added in as an option for everyone else who takes it after it was added. Makes’ it real easy to have a new option pop-up without you having to think of everything.
Once you get the results back, see if you have clusters of users by use case, job title or industry that you haven’t been intentionally targeting already.
You might have several.
Step 2: Look for fins in the data
Often the data divides into one of two ways
a scattering of use cases but similar job titles
similar use cases but scattered job titles
Here’s how to handle each of these situations.
If you have a lot of different use cases
You might have a “choose your own adventure” kind of product and you need to duplicate your marketing efforts for each of those users.
Get on calls and find out how each of those use cases uses your product.
Ask them:
how they found you - you’ll want to know so you can replicate it AND it will clue you in on whether there’s a multi-buyer aspect at play
what inspired them to use the product - what made this use-case a “duh” for them? You’ll want to know so that you can use that language in your marketing to them
What features they love in the product - the features that this use case cares about might be completely different which means a different landing page and updated feature copy and help guides
If they’ve had an hangups or frustrations using it - so you konw if there are little friction points you could fix to make it easier to sell this use case OR at least anticipate possible problems if you get a bunch of new users with this use case
if they feel the value-for-money is there - Are they planning on jumping? feel like the price is hard to justify? then maybe they’re not for you. If they say things like “honestly, i can’t believe the price is so good” then go get lots more of those customers and plan on raising your prices in 6 months (Or be like Arizona Green Tea and keep your prices and make friends in these frothy times)
How to know if you’ve found a blue ocean
There’s strong stickiness
They love the product and have no plans on switching
They’re telling all their friends
You know, casual.
What to do next: Update your messaging matrix!
What’s the point of doing all that research if you don’t record and organize it so that you can use it for your marketing!
Go one-by-one on your new use cases and build a thin marketing foundation for each
Website → Landing page for that use case, help desk article, factor the use case into your SEO/AEO/GEO plans
Analytics & CRM/Sales process → make sure to add this use case to your onboarding options
Emails → Update your new-user email onboarding sequence to include the use case and how to get started with it
Content & Distribution → what guides do they need, what newsletters do they read, what podcasts are they listening to? Add this niche into your content calendar and distribution plan.
Ask to use some of what they’ve said as a testimonial and update those on the site too so it’s clear that you know this use case exists and have an example for the next kind of user that comes along.
If you have a grouping of job titles
You might be starting to getting into SMB’s/Enterprise (esp if those titles are looking like they’re middle managers).
Look at that industry x job title combo and start doing interviews.
You want to know:
how did they find you?
who made the purchase decision? → this is to find out if there’s a multi-step-buying situation
what department are they in? → this is where those use cases can come into play! Maybe there’s another department in the same company that could use your tool as well. You can ask for an intro to the [job title] in that department and expandddd!
and ofc - why they love and are sticking around with your product and their favorite features.
If there are multiple possible directions to go here, then prioritize based on
how well you understand the buying process - the people involved, their objections, and who influences whom
their urgency
their willingness to pay
If you don’t understand the buying process but their urgency and willingness to pay is high, then do more customer discovery calls until you can understand and map it out.
Once you’re good there then,
Update your messaging matrix to a multi-step-buyer version and fill it all in!
The most important part here?
That final row → What do they need to push it up the chain?
That defines what your marketing foundations actually need to be to close
Do they need to know that you really can handle a company their size? Then you might need a sales landing page on your site that answers their biggest objections.
Do they need proof of how well it works and the time it saves them for their boss? Then you might want to start a usage/trigger-based email campaign that has a recap of everything they’ve done with your tool and a nifty report that shows at the end of their trial on why they should upgrade (boss mode kind of email)!
Do they need case studies? There’s your content!
And if each step in the buyer process is going to be doing independent research on you, then you might need a thin layer of marketing foundations for each.
Then prioritize getting on sales calls and building the marketing materials needed to move your deal through the buyers and closed!
and message in a bottle from me to you:
Industries can be a useful wildcard or a red herring
I, for one, think that industry is overrated. It’s a nice datapoint, but Use Cases and Job titles are your what and who.
Industry is a nice “Where” that can help you with marketing distribution, but don’t take it as a source of truth for deciding your target audience.
But better to ask and have the data than to not ask and wish you had.
After you do allllll that for 3-6 months take a step back and see iffins you wanna just keep swimming.
who closes the fastest? (see it, snap it)
who needs the least cajoling? (aka objections are answered lickity split)
which feels like the most natural to sell to? (your kind of people!)
That’s the new niche or market you wanna stick with.
And finally, some target audience approaches you might not have thought of:
Internationalize with regional currency. If you use stripe, you can set this up here (recommend if the recession is local)
Go up market (recommended if you have an enterprise-adjacent product)
Go down market (recommended if you’re trying to avoid a recession with quantity)
Go horizontal within the industry (recommended if your product truly is for just one industry by design) - is there another person on the chain that you could service or sell to with a few more features added in? maybe your product is for junior designers, but senior ones and staff ones would use it if it had a few more features? bout time to give it a shot!
There you have it. Make the boat real real big (but not capsize)
This is great! Tell me more!
I’m giving a workshop with Microconf Thurs, Oct 2nd on how to nail your Messaging and Marketing when you’re going upmarket.
The live workshop is just for MicroConf members (if you’re not one yet, what a great time to join!) but if you’d like the slides, keep an eye on my LinkedIn for the carousel version (or just email me and ask nicely).
P. S. Want to start off your 2027 knowing what to do next with your marketing?
Book Ignore No More now for your customer research and marketing roadmap and start it when you’re ready, up to 3 months down the road.
We make it easy to start off 2027 with a marketing plan you can actually use.
Future you could be very grateful of Present you.
Reply or book a call to get the marketing party started.
We’ll see you next week!
Sophia 💜👩🏽💻
