How to capture your desired audience.

The title is kind of a lie, sorry. Just be radically yourself and the right audience will find you. That’s the short truth. The rest of this note will explain what common wisdom says about getting to your audience, why and how to instead be purely authentic, so that you can get all the right customers without exhausting yourself or compromising your integrity.

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Most brands go about customer acquisition entirely arse about tit. Common wisdom pushes a stupid process down our throats: “clearly define your customer persona! think about their likes and dislikes! think about them! them them them!”. It’s utter nonsense for one very important reason. In the process of thinking customer-first—you disappear. And with it, all your magnetic tang.

And why do we do that? Why do we need to so tightly control who our customers are? If we look truly deeply within, there is often an unconscious or semi-conscious thought like... "If I was radically myself, and put my personality totally into the brand, the kind of people that I want to be my customers would not like it. I would end up attracting people who don’t have money or otherwise that I don’t want associated with my brand”. It’s often a combination of fear, desperation to control, and judgement.

But it’s exhausting to pretend to be even slightly different than you are. We all know and feel this from daily life. It extends into our brands and businesses too. You should communicate in your own words, have photography that you like, in the colours you like, with the designs that feel like they came from you. Run the kind of events you want to run, put out social media that feels as you would want to communicate publicly. Put yourself into everything you do.

This isn’t disguised therapy. It’s common knowledge. Be yourself, and you be a magnet to the right audience. You’ll put lots of other people off, but hey ho, fuck them!

I read some research the other day that said the most appealing religions are often the ones with the strictest standards. They are unabashedly themselves, and do not adapt to their followers. Can you extend that thinking to your own brand? What about if your brand was a strict religion that did not compromise?

Of course, there is basic hygeine in communications. You don’t want to insult your customer. You want to be reasonably respectful, you want to reach out and connect to them and offer them value. But after that, the rules are remarkably scant.

Ask yourself if you are really, totally, fully being yourself. Do you hide in generalisms and sanitised language to try and capture a certain audience?