The sixth eBook in the Foundations category. It walks the customer choice in detail - the cost of trying to serve everyone, the four-criteria fit test, the high-value segment patterns to look for, the profile sheet that turns a segment into a real person, and the way to commit to a first target market without closing doors forever.
Members ebook·5 chapters· 15 minute read
Chapter 5
Choosing Your First Target Market
Commit to one first target market for the next 90 days without closing doors permanently.
All the work in this eBook - the cost of serving everyone, the fit and buying-likelihood grid, the high-value patterns, the customer profile - leads to one act. Naming a first target market and committing to it for the quarter. Without the commitment the work stays interesting and the business stays blurry.
The good news is that the commitment is reversible. The page on the wall can be redrawn next quarter. The other plausible segments are still there. Choosing one for the next 90 days isn't choosing one forever - it's choosing one first, on purpose, with a date for review.
By the end of this chapter the choice is written down and the calendar is set for revisiting it.
The full chapter has the commitment sentence, the door-management rules for the segments you're not aiming at this quarter and the review cadence.
The commitment sentence
One sentence on the wall, alongside the strategy template. "For the next 90 days the business is aimed at [segment], described by the profile sheet dated [date]. Other customers are welcome but the marketing, offer and copy are designed for this segment." That's the whole commitment. It takes a minute to write and a quarter to honour.
Door-management rules
How to handle the segments you're not aiming at
Take the work when it comes in and fits your offer
Don't change the website to court them
Don't shape the next quarter's offer around them
Note the enquiry pattern so you can choose them next quarter if it makes sense
Be polite about referring on if the fit is genuinely poor
The point of the rules is to make the commitment real without being rude. You're not refusing to serve customers outside the segment. You're refusing to design the business around them this quarter.
How to use the choice in everyday work
Three places the choice shows up. In copy - the homepage headline, the offer page, the email signature, the proposal language. In channels - the platforms you spend time and money on, the partnerships you pursue, the events you attend. In conversation - the way you describe the business at networking, the case studies you pick, the testimonials you ask for. If the choice doesn't show up in those three places, it isn't real.
The review cadence
Weekly glance at the strategy template includes a glance at the customer name. End of quarter, the customer is one of the four review questions - did this segment carry the quarter? End of year, look back at the four quarterly customers and ask which one to commit to longer. The cadence keeps the choice alive without making it precious.
What if you choose wrong
It's a 90-day commitment, not a tattoo. If by week six the segment clearly isn't responding to the work, the next quarter can pick the second-shortlisted segment. The previous quarter still wasn't wasted - you proved one path doesn't fit, which is the only way the next path can be confidently chosen. Choosing wrong cheaply is faster than not choosing at all.
What to do this week
Write the commitment sentence on the wall. Update the customer row on the strategy template. Tell one trusted person in the business that this is the customer for the quarter. The choice is now real.
The recurring principle this chapter sits on is start with the customer. The commitment is the customer made operational. The next eBook, Positioning Your Business, takes the chosen customer and writes the sentence that makes the business easier to understand and easier to choose.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
Worked examples for different sized businesses.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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