There is a version of this story that almost everyone starting out goes through. You build something, write a description aimed at roughly everyone, and then wonder why the response is so quiet. The problem is rarely the product. It is almost always that nobody specific was ever imagined as the buyer.
The Broadest Target Is Usually the Weakest One
Beginners tend to describe their audience in demographic buckets: women aged 25-45, small business owners, people interested in fitness. These categories are not wrong, they are just not useful. A 34-year-old freelance translator and a 38-year-old e-commerce founder are both technically small business owners. They have almost nothing else in common.
The comparison worth making is between selling to a category versus selling to a situation. Categories describe who someone is. Situations describe what is happening to them right now, what is frustrating them, what they searched for at 11pm last Tuesday.
What the Situation-First Approach Actually Looks Like
Instead of starting with demographics, start with a specific problem moment. Not just struggling with time management, but: running a one-person consulting practice, losing track of client deliverables, and feeling embarrassed when something slips through. That is a situation. It has texture.
When you write for that person, the language changes. It gets specific. It references things they actually recognize. And when they read it, they feel seen rather than targeted.
Three Questions Worth Sitting With
- What does this person do right before they realize they need something like what I offer?
- What have they already tried, and why did it not stick?
- What would they type into a search bar at their most frustrated moment?
These are not rhetorical exercises. They produce actual language you can use in headlines, in onboarding emails, in the way you describe the problem on a sales page.
The Lesson That Takes Longest to Accept
Narrowing your audience feels like leaving money on the table. It is not. It is the opposite. A message written for one specific person in one specific situation will resonate with far more people than a message written for everyone, because most people recognize their situation before they recognize their demographic category.
Ola Vinterberg, who teaches content strategy workshops in Warsaw, puts it plainly: the more precisely you can describe someone's bad Tuesday, the more people will quietly think you wrote it about them.
Where to Start if You Have No Data Yet
Talk to five people who might plausibly buy what you offer. Not surveys. Conversations. Ask them about the last time they dealt with the problem you solve. Listen for the exact words they use. Those words are your first draft of a customer profile, and they will be more accurate than anything you invent at a desk.