Who's this for? Write it down.

Imagine this: You’re a tech founder, pre-launch with your MVP. It’s your baby. Your concept. Your code. And you’ve found yourself tangled up in the marketing.

It’s starting to feel like pulling the thread on a sweater. What words should go on this homepage and where should they go and how do you know they’re the right ones and what if they aren’t and how do you get out of this tangle?

First question I’ll ask you (and I already know the answer): Who is this for and have you written that down?

If you’ve come this far, you can talk with me clearly about who it’s for. You know who the early adopters will be, who you’ll stack on next, and so on. 

But no, you haven’t written any of it down. It’s all there. It’s just all in your head.

Whether you’re a solo founder, coordinating freelancers to help you make this happen, or leading a growing team of marketers, sales, customer success, and product people, you will only make it happen if you write down who it’s for.

  1. Who you built this for

  2. What matters to them

  3. What matters about what you made

  4. Where #2 and #3 overlap

Once you see those words on the screen, the marketing will basically write itself. 

Without the words written down, the marketing will constantly rewrite itself.

Agree on who you’re marketing to, who you’re selling to, and who you’re building the product for.

As with all things in marketing, it’s not complicated. It’s just not easy to do.

And this doesn’t only tangle up pre-launch founders. You can scale to multimillion-dollar ARR but still not have consensus on who you’re building for. Eventually, it’ll catch up with you.

In this case, you’ve got enough of a clear vision and solid product that, even without clear buyer profiles written so that everyone is committed to them, you’ve scaled.

You’ve established a brand. You’ve built an efficient sales practice. You’ve invested in growth marketing. Your product has steadily improved and adoption rates are solid.

Each of these things came with a certain level of friction. Because you had to constantly ask yourselves the questions that would’ve been answered by buyer personas. Still, this early and steady success gives you confidence that you’ll keep scaling. Until you hit a ceiling.

It might suddenly seem like things are unraveling. Or it might seem like you’ve stopped building traction.

Turns out, you can sell something really good to a certain number of people. But you won’t get beyond that initial success without being very clear about who it’s for. Who you’re building for, selling to, marketing to, and helping be successful. Who has this problem, who will pay to solve it, who will shift their behaviors to solve it, and who will choose you for all of that. And why.

Because as you grow, it becomes even more necessary that you have the right foundational pieces in place to keep everyone on your team moving in the same direction, focused on the same people, for the same reasons.

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Name the Problem

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Your Vision Comes First