Segmenting vs alienating

One of the pivotal moves marketers can make is broadcasting the right messages to the right audience.

That if you have a specific product or service for a specific group of people, it pays to let those people know you have something that’s designed for them.

And so lies the problem.

How do you communicate a message designed for one group without alienating another?

One way is to segment your audience, so that the right messages go to the right people.

Another is to be unapologetically specific. To acknowledge that a message that applies to almost everyone inherently applies to no one. That the only way to truly be informative, engaging, or personable is to refuse to generalize, to get specific about who it's for, and exclude everyone else.

Either they’ll get the joke or they won’t. It’ll either ring a bell or it won’t.

Marketing is about creating something for someone, not everyone.