Audience x Offer = Business

I like to think of a product like a prism, and your audience like the beam of light.

If you shine a light through the prism, it transforms it into its most beautiful form.

Your Audience is the Most Important Variable

Let’s say it’s 10x more important. I don’t know exactly how much more important, but it’s a pretty big deal.

Try multiple iterations for your audience, or else you lose the learnings you’re getting from the market. You have to get to know a market’s likes, dislikes, and overall interests.

Stick with Your Audience for 10-100 Offers

It sounds like a lot (and it is), but if you stick it out, odds are very high that you’ll find a working offer, and therefore, have a working business.

If not, you know the audience doesn’t work for you (although it probably works for someone), and you can move on.

What Do You Mean by Offer?

Some place where you ask your audience for money. Could be a mini-launch done over a week or two. Could be a landing page that offers them an ebook or workshop.

If it’s cold traffic, it’s 300 of the right people seeing your offer.

If it’s warm traffic, it’s 100 people seeing your offer.

I know that conversion rates vary wildly depending on price. I know that offers are fractal and the offer could be great but its name could be wrong. [TO DO: link to the fractal offers thing]. We’re gamblers, not scientists. [TO DO: link to the gamblers not scientists article]. If you spend a lot of money and/or time to make the offer, send more traffic to it. If you don’t spend much, send less.

TO DO: write a post on figuring how much data you need to test something. Pull this in as an example. Attach a little Google Sheet as a tool. Even better make a calculator!

When Should You Quit an Audience?

• Don’t like them: you realize you don’t like those people (e.g. I have a dog, and he’s great, but I don’t like working with pet lovers all that much)

• No ideas: you are out of ideas on an offer.

• No value: you started in an audience because you thought they had a lot of money, but realize you don’t have anything of value to offer them. Ditching is fine.

• Market is dying: newspapers are a popular punching bag. I remember Alex Hormozi mentioning this in $100M Offers. His buddy was serving a shrinking industry, switched to a growing one, and voila! Is doing great now.

• Can’t reach them (in a budget-friendly way): if you’ve tried offers, but can’t get enough folks from your audience to look at them in a way that matches your budget per test, you should probably bail.

• No money: are there zero competitors marketing to this audience? Can you find no one who is monetizing their interactions with them? If so, you may need to bail.

If you think of any more, please let me know!

Warning: when your offers are failing, you’re going to come up with rationalizations for why the elements above are true for you. The best option is to improve and get to know the market well. Or just quit before you start and choose another market. When in doubt, stick with your market.

Learn Their Language

Each audience has features that have implied benefits [TODO: write an article on this]. Here’s an example for me:

• “Grow your agency” → 🥱

• “Get more appointments for your agency” → 🙄

• “Appointment setting workflow using direct mail with a high lead efficiency” → 😍 shut up and take my money!!

Know their Problems

Each audience has a few core problems. In B2B sales, they call this the Jobs to Be Done framework.

Get to know your core problem.

Build an Email List

You can test out other offers to your email list. If you’re keeping them engaged by sending out emails (even if they’re sales emails) on a regular basis (like daily or weekly), you’ll have a built in testing platform! Plus, if things don’t work out, you can sell it for a bit of money.