I started writing this out in the analytics section, but I think it's an important enough concept that I want to give it a separate place to breath.

Not to mention, some people might skip the analytics section and go straight here, even when I told them not to.

I have found in my experience that the best form of marketing is tailoring the right message to the right people.

The best way I have found to explain it is in numbers, cause that is who I am.

The more people you try to message, the lower the likelihood that your message resonates with them, the lower the CTR and conversion rate of your campaign.

Fewer people to message = higher potential click-through rate = significantly more conversions.

And yes, this does boil down to: tailor a message to a very specific individual, and you will have a very high chance of a click and conversion. Obviously, that isn't scalable.

The reality is that doesn't happen often. The vast majority of the time I find people are trying to get in front of as many people as possible instead, so this whole page is just to try and convince you to focus on a much smaller sub-set of people.

That means having a specific target audience and understanding them to an extreme degree.

That way, you can use the language they use. Talk to them in the way they talk to each other.

This can often translate into: ok, but how do I talk to as many people as possible?

You don't.

This is a book on digital marketing - not on building a startup. So instead of writing some long explanation on how to find your target demographic and all that (you already did that when you were working on product market fit, right?) I will say that all that research you did applies to your digital marketing as well.

I generally take this even further with my customers: start excluding people.

You know how I talked about vanity metrics? The number of emails you have is one: remove the people who aren't in your target audience.

Is your tool a freemium model and only 5% upgrade to premium? Find ways to exclude the 95% from your marketing so you can find more of that 5%.

All this to say: the people you want to talk to should be a short list. Getting in front of THEM is far more important than getting in front of "people".