Step 05: Who’s This Really For?
Practical fit beats theory. If you can’t actually reach, talk to, or observe your audience, it doesn’t matter how well you describe them on paper. Focus on people, not profiles.
This isn’t about creating a perfect “target audience.” It’s about finding the group you can reach *now*—people whose attention you can earn and learn from, without a big budget or a marketing team.
What To Do
Your best customers aren’t in a spreadsheet. They’re in the world. If you want to help freelancers, for example, join their online forums or local meet-ups. Listen in. See what they’re actually struggling with.
- Do: Start with people you could talk to today, online or offline. Where do they already gather?
- Do: Focus on the problems, habits, or patterns you can see for yourself – not what you assume they want.
- Don’t: Invent a stereotype (e.g. “Sophie, 32, drinks chai lattes”). If you can’t find them, they aren’t real enough to matter.
- Don’t: Spend weeks building a perfect profile. If you can’t reach them now, don’t build for them.
Fit-check: Can I get in front of them without spending a fortune – and when I do, will I know what to say?
What’s a group you could join or observe this week, without an introduction or special access? Where do they spend time, and how could you connect?
Write a real-world description of people you could reach now (not “someday”), where they already gather, and how you’d open a door to them. No fiction, no wishful thinking.
Think in plain English. If you walked up to them, what would you say – not to sell, but to start a genuine conversation? Curiosity, empathy, or a shared problem is a better opening than a pitch.
What's next
You've defined the real, reachable people this idea is for. Next, we'll map out the simplest possible version of your idea to test with them.
EXPLORE MORE
Customer avatars can flatten the life out of your idea. When you start from a made-up profile on a slide deck, you lose the quirks, the contradictions, and the real-world edges that make the people you serve worth caring about.
Most “ideal customer” workbooks have you choose an age, a job title, and a list of favourite brands – then pretend you know that person well enough to build something for them. The problem? It creates a fictional character that may never exist, then pressures you to serve them perfectly.
Mini Case Study: Why Most Avatars Fail
A marketing agency once built a 20-page profile for their “ideal customer.” It had stock photos, fake hobbies, and invented quotes. The problem? Not a single person they met in real life matched the avatar. When they launched, nothing landed.
Lesson: If you can’t meet them, talk to them, and confirm they care, they’re not your target – they’re a ghost.
It’s tempting to build your plan around an “ideal customer” that exists only in your imagination. But like Truman in The Truman Show, you can spend years serving an audience that isn’t real – while missing the real people right outside your door.
Why it matters: If your customer feels like a scripted character, you’re in trouble. You need to serve the unscripted, imperfect, unpredictable humans who exist outside your head.
Think about the limits of your own assumptions about your audience. The best audience for your idea is already doing something – joining a Facebook group, showing up at local events, or solving the problem their own way. Go where they are. Watch, listen, and join in.
Before you move on, reality-check your thinking with your AI Buddy. This is where you can get feedback on whether your “who” is still too vague, too fictional, or actually reachable in the real world.
Use the prompts below to get a second opinion, or refine your thinking further if you’re not sure you’ve landed on an audience you can genuinely reach.
- Prompt 1: “Here’s the audience I’ve described. Can you spot anything too broad, too narrow, or fictional? What questions would you ask me to reality-check this?”
- Prompt 2: “Which part of my description sounds most believable—and which part would you challenge?”