Why You Need to Know Your Minimum Viable Audience
Back in my corporate climbing days, as a sales leader in a Fortune 100 company, I reported on multiple sales numbers each month. We crushed our sales goals. We always hit our targets. Yet my boss asked me the same question every month: Any good ones?
My boss knew something that I didn’t at that point in time. It wasn’t about how many people I got through the door. If they weren’t the right people, they’d be out the door just as soon as they came in. But the good ones stay.
In Seth Godin’s books Purple Cow and Tribes, he paints the picture of a minimum viable audience — the “good ones,” as my old boss would say. Brands, companies and organizations can’t be everything to everyone. Don’t tell me you’re here for all the cows. We succeed when we narrow our focus to a smaller group: our minimum viable audience.
Instead of trying to define the broad market, define the smallest possible market and take it by storm. As Seth Godin says, “When you seek to engage with everyone, you rarely delight anyone.”
At Fervor, defining that minimum viable audience looks like crafting Ideal Advocate profiles. We get to know the people who are your best clients. Our process includes real people, real intention and a qualitative approach. We identify the best clients: the people who will advocate for an organization to help it grow.
Knowing your Ideal Advocates — yes, your minimum viable audience — changes everything for your organization. Quit trying to win over everyone. Instead of trying to engage and satisfy everyone who might come through your doors, you can seek to engage and satisfy your Ideal Advocates.
Counterintuitive, right? It would seem that organizations that narrowly define what they’re after would have a hard time growing. In fact, the opposite is true. When you try to engage everyone, you rarely connect well with anyone. But when you have your eyes focused on a well-defined audience, you sharpen your approach and your brand grows stronger than ever.