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<title>Audience Targeting – Michel Fortin</title>
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<title>Audience Targeting – Michel Fortin</title>
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<item>
<title>Why Most Companies Are Targeting the Wrong People (And How I Fix It)</title>
<link>https://michelfortin.com/audience-targeting/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michel Fortin]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sun, 08 Mar 2026 12:32:53 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Marketing Strategy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Strategic Planning]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Audience Targeting]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Buyer Persona]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Fractional CMO]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Revenue Architecture]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://michelfortincom.bigscoots-staging.com/?p=4656</guid>
<description><![CDATA[When a solid offer fails to convert, the problem is usually the audience. Here is The Bullseye Method, the two-read targeting model I use in fractional CMO and CRO engagements to separate where the buyer is from who the buyer is, and how to apply both before changing the funnel.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
<div class="wp-block-group article-summary"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<h2 id="article-summary" class="wp-block-heading">Article Summary</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When a strong offer underperforms, the culprit is usually the audience — not price, message, or funnel. Effective targeting answers two distinct questions in order: Fit (who the buyer actually is, across demographic, psychographic, geographic, and technographic dimensions) and Placement (where that buyer can be reached). The Bullseye Method maps Placement as concentric rings — Core, Middle, and Outside, which are audience-centred, audience-related, and audience-oriented — around the same ideal buyer. Get both reads right, and downstream metrics like CAC, sales cycle, and churn fall into line.</p>
</div></div>
<div role="navigation" aria-label="Table of Contents" class="simpletoc wp-block-simpletoc-toc"><h2 class="simpletoc-title">Table of Contents</h2>
<ul class="simpletoc-list">
<li><a href="#article-summary">Article Summary</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-two-reads-most-teams-collapse">The two reads most teams collapse</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#fit-who-the-buyer-actually-is">Fit, who the buyer actually is</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#placement-where-you-can-actually-reach-them">Placement, where you can actually reach them</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-core-audiencecentered">The Core, audience-centered</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-middle-audiencerelated">The Middle, audience-related</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-outside-audienceoriented">The Outside, audience-oriented</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#what-good-research-actually-surfaces">What good research actually surfaces</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-cost-of-getting-this-wrong">The cost of getting this wrong</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#frequently-asked-questions">Frequently Asked Questions</a>
</li></ul></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The most common reason a solid offer fails to convert isn’t the price, the message, or the funnel. It’s the audience.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When I step into a <a href="/fractional-cmo/">fractional CMO</a> or <a href="/fractional-cro/">CRO</a> engagement and find a revenue system underperforming, one of the first things I audit is targeting. Not tactics. Not creative. Targeting. You can have a strong product, a capable team, and a well-built funnel, and still bleed conversion if the message is landing in front of the wrong people, on the wrong surfaces, at the wrong time.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Most companies think they know their audience. Very few have done the work to confirm it. Fewer still have separated the two questions that audience work actually has to answer.</p>
<h2 id="the-two-reads-most-teams-collapse" class="wp-block-heading">The two reads most teams collapse</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The mistake I see most often at this layer is conflating two questions that look like one. Where can the buyer be reached, and whether the buyer is the right buyer to close. Those are two different reads that run on different evidence and produce different decisions.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I call the first one Placement. The second one Fit. A complete audience read does both, in that order, and never treats one as a substitute for the other.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Placement asks where the buyer can be reached, influenced, and engaged. It is a question about surfaces. The channels, communities, publications, conferences, and networks where the audience is present and accessible.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Fit asks whether the buyer is worth closing once reached. It is a question about traits and behavior. The structural profile of the company, the role, the situation, and the way the buyer thinks, decides, and acts when faced with the kind of decision your offer asks them to make.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Treating Placement as Fit, or Fit as Placement, is where most targeting work goes off the rails. The teams I see running the most expensive mistakes have usually built a careful persona document, then aimed their entire budget at one ring of surfaces and called it strategy. The persona is the Fit work. The surfaces are the Placement work. The two reads compound when run together and dilute when collapsed.</p>
<h2 id="fit-who-the-buyer-actually-is" class="wp-block-heading">Fit, who the buyer actually is</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Fit work lives in the ICP (Ideal Client Profile) and the persona layer. The Ideal Customer Profile names the structural traits of the buyer your firm is built to serve. The persona names how that buyer thinks, decides, and acts inside the situation your offer addresses.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Good Fit work builds across four dimensions that show up in every engagement I run.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Demographics are the baseline. Age, role, industry, company size, revenue, geography. They tell you who might need what you offer. Psychographics go deeper. The motivations, frustrations, buying patterns, and beliefs behind the decision to buy or not. They tell you who actually wants it, and why, which is a very different question.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Geographics define where your market operates and makes decisions. Urban or remote, local or distributed, domestic or global. Technographics reveal how your audience uses technology. Whether they are early adopters or resistant to change. How heavily they rely on AI. How technically sophisticated their buying process is.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Demographics show who may need your solution. Psychographics show who is motivated enough to act on that need. Geographics and technographics tell you what the buyer’s world looks like when the decision actually gets made. All four feed the Fit read.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Fit is where Power Positioning lives. If you have not yet picked the buyer you are aimed at, no amount of placement work will rescue the strategy. The FAME pillars cover this directly, and the Aim pillar in particular is the discipline of firing at one specific buyer instead of spreading across many. I cover the full architecture in <a href="https://michelfortin.com/power-positioning/">Power Positioning</a> and the four pillars in <a href="https://michelfortin.com/power-positioning-pillars/">Focus, Aim, Multiply, and Engage</a>.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A complete diagnostic loop runs the Fit read first. Once you know who you are built to close, you can ask the next question with any precision.</p>
<h2 id="placement-where-you-can-actually-reach-them" class="wp-block-heading">Placement, where you can actually reach them</h2>
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="1024" height="1024" src="https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/bullseye.png" alt="Three-person strategy team mapping The Bullseye Method audience targeting framework on a glass wall during a marketing planning session" class="wp-image-4662" style="width:500px;height:auto" srcset="https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/bullseye.png 1024w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/bullseye-300x300.png 300w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/bullseye-150x150.png 150w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/bullseye-768x768.png 768w, https://michelfortin.com/wp-content/uploads/bullseye-600x600.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>Audience targeting model called The Bullseye Method</em></figcaption></figure>
</div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Placement is an audience targeting model called “The Bullseye Method.” I built it inside the original Power Positioning work and refined it across hundreds of engagements since.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The model maps the market your firm is trying to serve as three concentric rings around the ideal buyer your Fit work has already identified. The metaphor is a bull’s-eye, and the rings name three different placement relationships between your firm and the same buyer.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The buyer does not move across the rings. The buyer sits in one place. What changes across the rings is the surface through which you reach that same buyer. That distinction is the single most important thing to understand about the model. If you have ever read The Bullseye Method as a way to slice your audience into types, you have read it the wrong way. The rings are about access, not identity.</p>
<h2 id="the-core-audiencecentered" class="wp-block-heading">The Core, audience-centered</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Core is where your audience is most directly reachable. Their home base. The surfaces where you can address the buyer by name, title, or role without a third party in between.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A Core placement is the buyer’s direct email, their LinkedIn profile, the trade show where their badge reads their title, the named account list inside your CRM. The Core is the ring where targeting is structurally direct. You are not waiting to be discovered. You are reaching the buyer in the spaces they occupy professionally as themselves.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Core is where most teams concentrate their effort, and where most also stay too long. A Core that has been mined through climbs in cost-per-acquisition because every remaining buyer is harder to reach, slower to decide, or already known to a competitor with a stronger presence inside the same channel. The Core has to be the anchor of your targeting plan, not the entirety of it.</p>
<h2 id="the-middle-audiencerelated" class="wp-block-heading">The Middle, audience-related</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Middle is the placement context related to your audience. Not the buyer’s home base, but the surfaces they pass through, congregate in, or rely on as part of how they operate.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Middle is the trade association the buyer belongs to. The industry conference they attend each year. The publication they subscribe to. The peer community where they trade notes with people in the same function. The platform or tool they log into to do their job.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Middle is reached by going where the audience goes rather than addressing them by name. The buyer is the same buyer. The placement is one step removed from direct contact. Your firm has to earn the buyer’s attention inside someone else’s surface rather than command it through a one-to-one channel.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is the ring most teams underweight, and in most categories I diagnose, it is the most underpriced placement opportunity available to a firm that has earned the right to expand. Competitors with weaker products are sponsoring the conferences, contributing to the publications, and showing up in the communities that your Core-saturated audience is already inside.</p>
<h2 id="the-outside-audienceoriented" class="wp-block-heading">The Outside, audience-oriented</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Outside is the placement context oriented to your audience by way of identity, interest, and broader circles, even when those circles have nothing directly to do with your category.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Outside is the alumni network of the buyer’s MBA program. The non-industry publication they read for general business edification. The long-form podcast they listen to on the commute. The award show they aspire to be nominated for. It also runs through the network of people around the buyer. Board members, investors, hiring partners, and the advisors the audience relies on for professional work.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Outside is the ring most teams misread most completely. It is not a low-quality audience. It is a credibility surface, not a conversion surface. Running direct-response targeting against the Outside, treating it as top-of-funnel to be converted, produces a small trickle of conversions at a cost-per-acquisition that destroys the unit economics.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Outside is where positioning durability lives. The keynote in front of an audience that is not your direct buyer but whose attention your direct buyer respects. The bylined article in a publication the audience reads outside of work. The Outside builds, slowly, the perception layer your Core and Middle eventually run on. A firm that runs only the Core and the Middle produces conversion in the short term and nothing for the long term. Three years later, the competitor with an Outside presence is winning on perception what the firm without one is trying to win on price.</p>
<h2 id="what-good-research-actually-surfaces" class="wp-block-heading">What good research actually surfaces</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The most valuable targeting intelligence does not come from a dashboard. It comes from direct conversations with the people who have already bought from you.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I push clients to interview their best customers. Not surveys. Conversations. The questions that matter most are not “what do you like about our product.” They are: why did you buy when you did? What were you using before? Where did you first hear about us? What almost stopped you? What would you tell a colleague who was considering us?</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Those answers surface both reads at once. The buyer’s situation, motivations, and decision pattern feed the Fit read. The path they took to find you, the surfaces they encountered you on, the names they cite when they describe how they got to your door, all of that feeds the Placement read. A single conversation, done well, sharpens both at the same time.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Robert Collier, the legendary direct-response copywriter, wrote decades ago that the key to great marketing is to enter the conversation already happening in the prospect’s mind. That principle has not aged. It just gets harder to execute when you are scaling, which is exactly where a <a href="/fractional-cmo/">fractional CMO</a> earns their keep.</p>
<h2 id="the-cost-of-getting-this-wrong" class="wp-block-heading">The cost of getting this wrong</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Misaligned targeting does not just reduce conversion rates. It distorts every downstream metric in your <a href="/revenue-architecture/">revenue system</a>.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Cost per acquisition climbs, sales cycles lengthen, and churn rises because the customers you acquired were not the right fit to begin with. The team then spends enormous energy optimizing a funnel that is aimed at the wrong people, on the wrong surfaces, asking the wrong questions.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The fix is rarely more spend or more content. It is a sharper, more honest answer to a deceptively simple question, asked in two parts. Who exactly are we built to close, and where exactly can we reach them.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Get both right, in that order, and almost everything else in the revenue architecture becomes easier to build.</p>
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>
<h2 id="frequently-asked-questions" class="wp-block-heading">Frequently Asked Questions</h2>
<div class="wp-block-wpseopress-faq-block-v2 is-layout-flow wp-block-wpseopress-faq-block-v2-is-layout-flow">
<details id="why-does-audience-targeting-matter-more-than-the-funnel-or-the-price" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>Why does audience targeting matter more than the funnel or the price?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A strong offer aimed at the wrong people still fails. The funnel, the creative, and the price are all downstream of targeting. Optimizing them without first confirming you are reaching the right buyers is like tuning an engine that is pointed the wrong direction. When I audit an underperforming revenue system, targeting is one of the first things I check, because misalignment there distorts every metric downstream.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-is-the-difference-between-placement-and-fit-in-audience-targeting" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What is the difference between Placement and Fit in audience targeting?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Placement asks where the buyer can be reached, influenced, and engaged. It is a question about surfaces, the channels and communities and publications and conferences where the audience is present. Fit asks whether the buyer is worth closing once reached. It is a question about traits and behavior, the company profile, the role, and the way the buyer thinks and decides. A complete audience read does both, in that order. Most teams collapse them and treat one as a substitute for the other.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-are-the-four-dimensions-of-buyer-fit" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What are the four dimensions of buyer Fit?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Demographics, psychographics, geographics, and technographics. Demographics tell you who might need your offer. Psychographics tell you who is motivated enough to act on that need, which is a very different question. Geographics tell you where your market operates and decides. Technographics tell you how the buyer uses technology and what their buying process looks like. All four feed the Fit read, which has to be complete before the Placement read can produce anything precise.</p>
</details>
<details id="how-does-the-bullseye-method-work" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>How does the Bullseye Method work?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The model maps the market your firm serves as three concentric rings of placement around the same buyer. The Core is audience-centered, the direct-reach surfaces where the buyer can be addressed by name or title. The Middle is audience-related, the surfaces the buyer passes through, like trade associations, conferences, publications, and peer communities. The Outside is audience-oriented, the broader circles the buyer moves in by way of identity, interest, and network. The buyer does not move across rings. What changes is the surface through which you reach that same buyer.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-is-the-real-cost-of-targeting-the-wrong-audience" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What is the real cost of targeting the wrong audience?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Cost per acquisition climbs, sales cycles lengthen, and churn rises because the customers you acquired were not the right fit to begin with. The team then spends enormous energy optimizing a funnel that is aimed at the wrong people, on the wrong surfaces, asking the wrong questions. The fix is rarely more spend or more content. It is a sharper answer to two questions, asked in order. Who exactly are we built to close, and where exactly can we reach them.</p>
</details>
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<p class="wp-block-paragraph"></p>
]]></content:encoded>
</item>
<item>
<title>Why Personality-Matched Messaging Is the Most Overlooked Growth Lever</title>
<link>https://michelfortin.com/personality-matched-messaging/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michel Fortin]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 07 Mar 2026 21:31:33 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Marketing Strategy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Sales Optimization]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Audience Targeting]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[B2B marketing]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Buyer Psychology]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Content Strategy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Copywriting]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Marketing Communications]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Persuasion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Revenue Strategy]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://michelfortincom.bigscoots-staging.com/?p=4503</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Most messaging fails not because it's poorly written, but because it doesn't match how your buyer actually processes information. Here's the framework that fixes that.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
<div class="wp-block-group article-summary"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<h2 id="article-summary" class="wp-block-heading">Article Summary</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Generic messaging doesn’t just underperform. It actively loses buyers who sense the message wasn’t written for them. This post maps four buyer personality types (Driver, Expressive, Analytical, Amiable) rooted in behavioral science and shows how each evaluates value and makes decisions differently. Knowing which type dominates your market shapes messaging tone, depth, structure, and emotional register. Targeted messaging built for a specific personality consistently outperforms broad messaging designed to offend no one.</p>
</div></div>
<div role="navigation" aria-label="Table of Contents" class="simpletoc wp-block-simpletoc-toc"><h2 class="simpletoc-title">Table of Contents</h2>
<ul class="simpletoc-list">
<li><a href="#article-summary">Article Summary</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-four-buyer-personality-types">The Four Buyer Personality Types</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-four-types-in-practice">The Four Types in Practice</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#why-this-work-pays-off">Why This Work Pays Off</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#why-this-matters-for-leadership">Why This Matters for Leadership</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#a-practical-illustration">A Practical Illustration</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#a-real-case-from-my-experience">A Real Case from My Experience</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#how-to-identify-your-dominant-type">How to Identify Your Dominant Type</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#what-to-do-when-your-market-is-mixed">What to Do When Your Market Is Mixed</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#why-generic-messaging-always-loses">Why Generic Messaging Always Loses</a>
</li>
<li><a href="#frequently-asked-questions">Frequently Asked Questions</a>
</li></ul></div>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Generic messaging doesn’t just underperform. It actively alienates the people you’re trying to reach.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Most leaders know they should “know their audience.” But very few go deep enough to ask: what kind of person is in that audience, and how do they actually prefer to receive information?</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">That question matters more than your headline, your offer, or your price point. Because if your message doesn’t match your buyer’s personality, even a great value proposition falls flat.</p>
<h2 id="the-four-buyer-personality-types" class="wp-block-heading">The Four Buyer Personality Types</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Psychologists and behavioral scientists have studied buying behavior for decades, and their frameworks go back even further. Around 400 B.C.E., Hippocrates identified four fundamental human temperament types: Choleric (results-oriented), Sanguine (people-oriented), Phlegmatic (service-oriented), and Melancholic (quality-oriented).</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Modern researchers have reframed them many times. DiSC, Myers-Briggs, The Four Tendencies, The Platinum Rule, and others all revolve around these four primary styles.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">In marketing, the four types are Driver, Expressive, Analytical, and Amiable. Each type is defined by two behavioral dimensions: assertiveness (how strongly someone expresses their will) and responsiveness (how openly they express emotion).</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The four personality types emerge from the four possible combinations of those two qualities. High assertive plus low responsive produces a Driver, and high assertive plus high responsive produces an Expressive. On the other side, low assertive plus low responsive produces an Analytical, and low assertive plus high responsive produces an Amiable.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Understanding where your market lands on that matrix shapes everything: your messaging tone, depth, structure, and emotional register.</p>
<h2 id="the-four-types-in-practice" class="wp-block-heading">The Four Types in Practice</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Drivers want results.</strong> They’re practical, impatient, and focused on outcomes. They don’t care how something works. They care about what it will do for them.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Think bankers, sales managers, purchasing agents, and executives. They ask: how long does it take, what will I get, and what does it cost? Everything else is noise.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Analyticals want details.</strong> They’re skeptical, methodical, and evidence-driven. They want to understand the how before they’ll believe the what. Features, specifications, data, methodology: the more, the better.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Engineers, programmers, researchers, and physicians fit this profile. Emotion still plays a role in their decisions, but they need logic to justify those emotions.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Expressives want accolades.</strong> They’re spontaneous, image-conscious, and motivated by status and recognition. Artists, performers, designers, and entertainers buy based on emotional impact and social currency.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">They want to know: will this make me look good? Will people notice?</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Amiables want connections.</strong> They’re warm, empathetic, and relationship-centered. They evaluate every purchase through the lens of how it affects the people in their lives.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Social workers, HR professionals, consultants, and caregivers often fit this profile. They respond to stories, testimonials, and warmth.</p>
<h2 id="why-this-work-pays-off" class="wp-block-heading">Why This Work Pays Off</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Before we get into how to apply this in your business, it helps to name what the work actually delivers. I think about personality-matched messaging across two trios.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The first trio is the reasons. Three Cs.</p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Connection.</strong> You recognize and understand the people in your market on their terms, not yours.</li>
<li><strong>Congruence.</strong> Your message matches the receiver. The voice, the depth, and the emotional register all read as written for the buyer you’re trying to reach.</li>
<li><strong>Conversion.</strong> Audiences move when the message lands. The lift is downstream of Connection and Congruence, never independent of them.</li>
</ul>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The second trio is the objectives. Three Ps.</p>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Partitioning.</strong> You identify which types your audience splits into and which one dominates.</li>
<li><strong>Personalization.</strong> You write to each type in the register it responds to, not to all four at once.</li>
<li><strong>Performance.</strong> Demand and acquisition improve when the first two are in place. Without them, performance stalls and the team starts blaming the offer, the channel, or the brand.</li>
</ul>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Three Cs that say why this matters. Three Ps that say what the work does. The rest of this article is built on top of that frame.</p>
<h2 id="why-this-matters-for-leadership" class="wp-block-heading">Why This Matters for Leadership</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Here’s the key insight: your market will predominantly fall into one of these four types. Not exclusively. People are complex, and you’ll always have a range. But one type will usually dominate based on your industry, product, and positioning.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Your job as a leader is to identify that dominant type and make sure every touchpoint speaks to them directly. Where they fall on the personality matrix tells you how to frame your message. Where they fall on <a href="https://michelfortin.com/oath-formula/">OATH</a>, how aware and how willing they are, tells you whether they’re ready to hear it.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When your market is primarily Drivers, keep messaging short and outcome-focused. Cut anything that doesn’t advance the decision. When your market is primarily Analyticals, go deep with data, proof, and methodology before making promises.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When your market is primarily Expressives, lead with identity, image, and aspiration. When your market is primarily Amiables, lead with stories, testimonials, and human impact.</p>
<h2 id="a-practical-illustration" class="wp-block-heading">A Practical Illustration</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Consider a dentist who needs to explain a procedure to four different patients on the same morning.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Analytical wants to know which teeth will be affected, what filling material will be used, and exactly how much freezing will be applied. The more specific, the better.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Driver wants to know how long the appointment will take, when they can return to work, and what the total cost is. Spare the rest.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Amiable is thinking about their spouse’s reaction to their new smile, or whether their kids will see them differently. The relationship outcome matters most.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Expressive is wondering whether they’ll look younger, more attractive, and whether people will notice the change. Appeal to the image.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Same procedure. Four completely different conversations. The same dynamic plays out in every sales conversation, every landing page, and every marketing campaign your company runs.</p>
<h2 id="a-real-case-from-my-experience" class="wp-block-heading">A Real Case from My Experience</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The dentist is a thought experiment. Here’s a real case from my own audience work.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I built market personas for Ingenium Canada, the Crown Corporation that operates three Canadian museums covering agriculture and food, science and technology, and aviation. Each museum draws a distinct audience, with real overlap across them.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The research surfaced four dominant personas the messaging would need to reach. I built them from market trends and museum-industry benchmarks, publicly available consumer and behavioural data, and traffic analytics from external sources.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">(No internal customer surveys ran during the engagement. And while the audience also consisted of children, no children’s data was collected, because privacy law makes that data inaccessible. So this work was purely based on publicly available data, and nothing more.)</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The four personas were the Educator, the Enthusiast, the Activist, and the Advocate.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Educator was a primary-school teacher in her late thirties who valued family bonds and practical learning. The Enthusiast was a young professional in tech who valued creativity, taste, and self-expression. The Activist was a younger professional in government who valued sustainability and social impact. The Advocate was a marketing manager who valued reputation, motivation, and innovation.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Each persona answered a different question about what to expect, what to value, and what to engage with. The messaging built on top of the personas calibrated differently for each. On tone. On imagery. On which museum the messaging surfaced. On which channels it ran through.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The methodology mattered as much as the output. Audience work without internal customer data tends to get dismissed as guesswork. The Ingenium engagement showed that the right combination of public consumer data, behavioural research, and traffic analytics produces a four-segment shape stable enough to act on.</p>
<h2 id="how-to-identify-your-dominant-type" class="wp-block-heading">How to Identify Your Dominant Type</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The Ingenium work points to a methodology that holds across B2C and B2B. The work runs across three categories of sources.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Direct sources.</strong> Audiences you already have a relationship with. Existing customers, active prospects, referrals. Polls, surveys, and focus groups. Contests, feedback loops, and post-purchase questions. The signal is strong because the source is real.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Indirect sources.</strong> Data you can pull without owning the relationship. Competitor analyses. Third-party networks. Market research reports. Machine-learning audience tools that infer behavioural patterns from public signals.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Online tools.</strong> This category has grown the fastest. SparkToro, SEMrush, and SpyFu surface audience-level signals. Answer The Public and AlsoAsked map the questions your audience is searching. Google Analytics and Google Trends show how those searches move over time. Quora, Reddit, and Answer Socrates expose what the audience is asking in conversation. BoardReader reaches further into community discussion.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Run two or three sources from each category in parallel. The dominant type usually surfaces within a week of careful reading. If two types cluster instead of one, the market is mixed, which is the next topic.</p>
<h2 id="what-to-do-when-your-market-is-mixed" class="wp-block-heading">What to Do When Your Market Is Mixed</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Some markets are split across types. When that’s the case, segmentation is the answer. Split your audience into distinct groups and build separate messaging for each.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Large companies have done this for years. Think Coke versus Diet Coke, or Levi’s Red Tabs in high-end boutiques versus their budget line on big-box store shelves. Same essential product, different messages, different audiences.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you have the resources, build separate landing pages or campaigns for each dominant segment. If you don’t, identify the most dominant type and build your messaging primarily for them.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Accepting that you won’t resonate with everyone isn’t a failure. That’s strategic focus.</p>
<h2 id="why-generic-messaging-always-loses" class="wp-block-heading">Why Generic Messaging Always Loses</h2>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The temptation with broad markets is to create messaging that offends no one. The logic seems sound: if you’re inoffensive, you’ll appeal to everyone.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But that’s not how persuasion works. When your messaging is designed not to alienate anyone, it becomes bland enough to connect with no one.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Your buyer notices the message wasn’t written for them. They may not articulate it, but they feel it and they disengage.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is the same principle behind <a href="/power-positioning-pillars/">Power Positioning</a>, where Focus and Aim work together to narrow your message before you multiply it. Targeted messaging that doesn’t resonate with a few will always outperform generic messaging that fails to land with anyone.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The antidote isn’t to chase universal appeal. It’s to sharpen your focus on the audience that matters most and build <a href="/messaging-architecture/">messaging</a> with enough precision and personality that they feel like you’re speaking directly to them.</p>
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>
<h2 id="frequently-asked-questions" class="wp-block-heading">Frequently Asked Questions</h2>
<div class="wp-block-wpseopress-faq-block-v2 is-layout-flow wp-block-wpseopress-faq-block-v2-is-layout-flow">
<details id="what-are-the-four-buyer-personality-types-in-marketing" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What are the four buyer personality types in marketing?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The four types are Driver, Expressive, Analytical, and Amiable. They emerge from two behavioral dimensions: assertiveness (how strongly someone expresses their will) and responsiveness (how openly they express emotion). Drivers are high assertive, low responsive. Expressives are high assertive, high responsive. Analyticals are low assertive, low responsive. Amiables are low assertive, high responsive. Each type evaluates value and makes decisions differently.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-does-each-personality-type-respond-to-in-messaging" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What does each personality type respond to in messaging?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Drivers want short, outcome-focused messaging — results, timelines, costs, nothing more. Analyticals want depth: data, methodology, specifications, and evidence before they’ll accept any promise. Expressives respond to identity and aspiration — they want to know if the offer will make them look good and whether people will notice. Amiables respond to stories, testimonials, and human impact — they evaluate purchases through the lens of how they affect the people around them.</p>
</details>
<details id="why-does-generic-messaging-fail-to-convert" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>Why does generic messaging fail to convert?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">When messaging is designed not to alienate anyone, it becomes bland enough to connect with no one. Buyers sense when a message wasn’t written for them, even if they can’t articulate why — and they disengage. Targeted messaging that doesn’t resonate with some buyers will consistently outperform generic messaging that fails to land with any of them. Broad appeal is a positioning trap, not a growth strategy.</p>
</details>
<details id="how-do-you-identify-which-personality-type-dominates-your-market" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>How do you identify which personality type dominates your market?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Most markets skew toward one dominant type based on industry, product, and positioning. Look at who actually buys from you, what language they use in sales conversations and testimonials, and what objections appear most often. Engineers and researchers tend toward Analytical. Executives and sales managers tend toward Driver. HR professionals and consultants tend toward Amiable. Creative professionals tend toward Expressive. The pattern usually becomes clear quickly.</p>
</details>
<details id="what-should-you-do-when-your-market-spans-multiple-personality-types" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>What should you do when your market spans multiple personality types?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Segment and build separate messaging for each dominant group — separate landing pages, campaigns, or at minimum separate ad creative. If resources are limited, identify the most dominant type and optimize primarily for them, accepting that you won’t resonate equally with everyone. Strategic focus on the right audience consistently outperforms trying to serve all audiences with a single message.</p>
</details>
<details id="how-do-you-actually-research-your-buyers-personality-type" class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary><strong>How do you actually research your buyer’s personality type?</strong></summary>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Run three categories of sources in parallel. Direct, like your own customers, prospects, surveys, and feedback. Indirect, like competitor analyses, market research, and machine-learning audience tools. Online, including SparkToro, SEMrush, Answer The Public, AlsoAsked, Reddit, and Quora. The dominant type usually surfaces within a week of careful reading. When two types cluster instead of one, the market is mixed and the segmentation approach above applies.</p>
</details>
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