Sharpening your audience beyond an industry list

In short

Industry and company size describe who could be addressed — not who buys.
Five characteristics actually separate: the trigger, prior experience, the decision path, the real alternative, and the measure of success.
The test: can you name a specific company that fits exactly — and one that just misses?
A good description hurts, because it excludes customers you would like to have.

Why industry and size are not enough

Two trades businesses with twenty staff each can be completely different customers for you: one has just taken the business over and is rebuilding everything, the other has run the same way for thirty years. Same industry, same size — one buys, the other never will.

What separates them is not a characteristic of the company but a characteristic of the situation.

The five characteristics that separate

1. The trigger

What happened shortly before someone starts looking for a solution? A handover, a departure, a lost major client, an audit, a growth jump. The most important characteristic — and the one least often captured.

2. Prior experience

What has the person tried before, and why did it fail? Someone who has twice attempted something similar without success needs a different approach from someone searching for the first time.

3. The decision path

Who decides, who has to agree, who can block? With two people the sale looks different from with five — regardless of company size.

4. The real alternative

What are you competing against? Usually not another provider but "do it ourselves" or "do nothing". That distinction changes the entire argument.

5. The measure of success

How does the person judge whether it was worth it — and when? Someone who wants figures after three months is a different customer from someone planning over two years.

Worth knowing

The trigger has the greatest separating power of all the characteristics and appears in almost no audience description — because it cannot be read off company data, only out of conversations.

That is exactly what makes it valuable: competitors deriving their audience from industry data do not know it. If you know your best customers regularly arrive shortly after a business handover, you can aim content, timing and approach at that — and meet people at the moment they are actually looking.

The afternoon that produces the description

List your last twenty customers (30 min.). Not the ideal ones — the actual ones.
Mark the best five (15 min.). Best means: satisfied, profitable, straightforward, would gladly do again. Not: largest revenue.
Gather the five characteristics per customer (60 min.). From notes, emails, memory. Where something is missing, ask briefly — that is not a sales call, and most people answer gladly.
Look for patterns (30 min.). Which characteristics recur among the best five and are absent from the weakest?
Write the description (30 min.). Two to four sentences, with the trigger and an exclusion.
Test it (15 min.). Can you name a specific company that fits exactly? And one that just misses and is therefore excluded?

Careful Step two decides the quality of the result. Sort by revenue rather than by how the work went and you get a description that leads you to your most exhausting customers. The largest job is rarely the best one.

What the description looks like

Not as a profile card with an invented name and a photo, but as a sentence with a trigger, characteristics and an exclusion:

Too broad

"Small and mid-sized companies in Europe wanting to professionalise their marketing."

Problem: excludes nobody, contains no trigger, gives no instruction for action.

Usable

"Owner-led service businesses with 5 to 30 people, where marketing has so far been done on the side and who have just hired or appointed someone for it. They have one or two tools in use that nobody really knows. Not suitable for companies with their own marketing department."

Why: trigger named, prior experience named, exclusion named.

From practice

The objection to a narrow description is always the same: "then we lose everyone else." In fact the opposite happens — an offering visibly made for someone particular gets taken seriously by neighbouring groups too. An offering for everyone is felt by nobody as being made for them.

The narrow description is also a work saver: it answers in passing which topics you cover, which examples you choose and which enquiries you decline. That is three decisions a week that afterwards make themselves.

Prompt

Help me sharpen our audience. Ask questions rather than guessing.

Our five best customers – best meaning satisfied, profitable,
straightforward, would gladly do again (not: largest revenue):

Customer 1: [industry, size, what triggered their search, what
they had tried before, who decided, what we competed against,
how they measure success]
Customer 2: [...]
Customer 3: [...]
Customer 4: [...]
Customer 5: [...]

Customers where it did not go well: [brief description]

Tasks:
1. Name the characteristics recurring among the best five and
   absent from the difficult ones. Support each from the example.
2. Ask me up to ten follow-up questions whose answers would
   sharpen the description. Ask about the trigger if I have not
   named it.
3. Phrase two to four sentences of audience description with
   trigger, prior experience and an explicit exclusion.
4. Name three kinds of enquiry we should decline under that
   description.
5. Name five topics fitting this audience, and three we can save
   ourselves.

Do not invent customer characteristics I have not stated.

In closing

An audience comes from situations, not from company data. The trigger separates more sharply than any industry classification — and it sits in no database, only in your conversations.

The test stays the same: if the description excludes nobody you would like to have, it is not finished. And once it is finished, three decisions a week make themselves afterwards.

Common questions

How do you define an audience in B2B?

Not through industry and company size but through five characteristics of the situation: the trigger that started the search, prior experience with similar solutions, the decision path inside the company, the real alternative — often "do it ourselves" rather than a competitor — and how the customer side measures success.

Why is "small and mid-sized businesses" not enough?

Because it excludes nobody and gives no clue about when someone buys. Two companies of the same size in the same industry can be entirely different customers — the difference lies in the situation, not in the company characteristics.

What is the trigger and why does it matter so much?

The event shortly before the search — a handover, a departure, a lost major client, an audit, a growth jump. It has the greatest separating power of all the characteristics and can only be gathered from conversations, not from company data. That is exactly why competitors working from industry data do not know it.

How do you recognise a good audience description?

By being able to name off the top of your head a specific company that fits exactly — and one that just misses and is therefore excluded. A good description hurts a little, because it excludes customers you would like to have.

Do you not lose customers with a narrow audience?

In practice, rarely. An offering visibly made for someone particular gets taken seriously by neighbouring groups too; an offering for everyone is felt by nobody as being made for them. The narrow description also settles several decisions a week — topics, examples, enquiries to decline.

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