2 builders who never spoke to each other

Check the audience can actually buy

Technical users of a language or tool include students, hobbyists and researchers who will never authorise a purchase, and they cost exactly as much to reach as the people who would. One enterprise platform advertising to users of two programming languages converted poorly until the targeting moved to a different audience, found by combining analytics with what the sales team was hearing. The same logic rules out aiming a business tool at consumers or students, who are worth less over their lifetime at identical cost.

The method

1. 01

   Do not aim paid acquisition at consumers or students for a B2B tool: they cost as much to reach as anyone else and are worth less over their lifetime.

2. 02

   Check whether the audience you are targeting can actually buy: technical users of a language or tool include students, hobbyists and researchers who will never purchase expensive software.

What it returned

• Grammarly markets at white collar workers even though its student user base runs into the millions.

• An enterprise data science platform advertising to R and Python users converted poorly; the fix was targeting a different audience, found by combining analytics with the sales team's conversations.

Sources

• B2B SaaS Marketing - Getting started with paid acquisitionChris Frantz · chrisfrantz.com · Overview · 2020-04-23
• Why Ad Campaigns FailGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · Don't-Know-Better Errors · 2017-01-17