Market Core · Audience · Module
Where they are
Where each segment can actually be reached, in what state of attention, and at what cost — the half of audience work that makes the rest usable.
The idea
How it works
An audience that cannot be reached separately is not addressable, however well defined. Reachability belongs in the segmentation criteria and is usually treated as a media question to be solved later.
State of attention matters as much as location. The same person is a different audience while searching, while scrolling and while sitting in a meeting, and a message that works in one fails in the others.
Attention is also where this module is most often confused with the customer journey, because searching is both a state of attention and a sign of where someone has got to. The test is whether the sentence would still be true in a year when nobody buys anything. That an audience searches trade databases is a standing fact about them and belongs here; that they start searching once the design phase opens is a moment in a sequence and belongs in the journey.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Establish where they actually are
From asking, not from assuming. Professional audiences are rarely where the marketing team is.
- 02
Note the state of attention
Searching, browsing, or captive. It determines what kind of message can work at all — and if the answer is really about a stage they have reached, it belongs in the customer journey instead.
- 03
Cost the reach per segment
Some segments are cheap to reach and small; others are expensive and valuable. Both facts are needed.
- 04
Find the places with no competition
Where a segment gathers and nobody is present is the cheapest reach available.
One level in
The components of where they are
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Find where a segment gathers and nobody is present. That is the cheapest reach available.
The other modules in audience
Segments
How the audience divides in ways that predict behaviour and permit separate treatment — the test being whether two segments would actually be served differently.
LearnPersonas
The recurring types found inside a segment: what each is actually like, assembled from evidence rather than from a workshop — descriptive enough to be recognised, honest enough to be wrong in public.
LearnSegment value
What each segment is worth: what they spend, what they cost to acquire, and how long they stay — the number that decides where effort goes.
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