Get your heart rate above 150.... legally

Jobs Not To Be Done

If you think your target audience is ‘everyone’ then, go pause your marketing activity, because today’s post is for you.

The very best marketing, and products, have laser focused ideas of who their customers are. But to be able to fully understand who your customer is, it is also important to define your anti-customer as well.

Your anti-customer is the opposite of who you want to acquire. Someone who you might even go ahead and refund as soon as they signed up. But more importantly, the person who should see your marketing and turn away.

Over the last two years, paid social has evolved so that the best audience targeting is no targeting at all. However, one parallel trend from brands I’ve seen is the belief that as a result, your total addressable market (TAM) is everyone in market. It’s not.

In fact, in a world where you don’t rely on audience segmentation to target your user, defining your anti-customer is more vital than ever.

If you try to appeal to everyone, then you appeal to no-one

Marketers seem to be natural fans of customer profiles. Whether using a framework like Jobs to be Done, or a less effective approach like personas, it’s definitely an area we are in our comfort zone.

Where we are less comfortable is defining who we don’t want to acquire as customers.

I think this is because most of the best marketers err on the side of openness and empathy. These are required traits when your job is to be able to put yourself in your customers’ shoes.

As a result, the idea of being exclusive doesn’t naturally gel.

It’s not just marketers.

Founders too are incentivised not to think in niches. If the VC your pitching wants a believable route to $100m ARR so you can become a unicorn, then starting off talking about small groups of a few thousand will feel counter-intuitive.

As a result, for both marketers and founders, it’s easy to fall down the path of thinking in the widest possible terms.

But by doing so, you run the very high risk of appealing to no-one at all.

Just like with finding an acquisition channel: it’s hard enough to get one working, why would you ever attempt five at the same time. The same is true of audiences.

Developing your anti-customer

Imagine you’re developing a protein crisp company that aims to be a fun but nutritious snack packed full of pea protein.

You’ve interviewed a handful of your early adopters and you’ve got your emerging JTBD.

The Job Story for it is “When I, as a regular gym goer, am hungry between meals, I want to find a tasty but workout-positive snack, so that I can stop feeling hungry and also feel like I’m contributing towards my health goals.”

That gives you a clear story of people to go after.

But the next step should be what is the inverse of that. Or what are the characteristics of people who will never ever want to buy these crisps as a result.

With this protein crisp example, that might include people who:

• Roll their eyes at the modern obsession with protein

• Don’t go to the gym everyday

• Don’t understand why you wouldn’t just eat more red meat if you needed more protein

• Think healthy snacks are a bit wet

• Love Walkers crisps and always have since the Lineker ads in the 90s

• See being unhealthy as virtuous

With this list of anti-customer requirements, you can now start thinking ‘how can we make sure we turn these people away in our marketing?’

This could be as simple as a hook that begins “if you still eat and love Walkers, then this ad isn’t for you,” or you can approach it with greater nuance.

Gymbox’s clear anti-customers

Back in 2019, Quiet Storm helped Gymbox with this above identity and campaign.

If you’re a gym, it’d be easy to think you wanted to attract anyone who (1) wanted to work out and (2) was willing to pay the ongoing subscription fees. But while that might help people try something. It doesn’t make them fall in love with it, and engrain a habit that builds long term retention.

This campaign speaks very clearly to a customer, and turns away their anti-customer.

“Be great in bed” is the sort of tongue-in-cheek ‘banter’ that will make many smile, and an equal number groan.

Even without the tablet on the ad, “Get your heart rate above 150 legally” is a reference that will speak to anyone who’s been clubbing and around drugs, and turn away anyone who hasn’t.

There is a clear anti-customer in mind here, which means the customers at Gymbox was self-selecting. As a result it’s got a defined proposition compared to many faceless gym brands.

While their latest campaign plays in the same strategy, it’s definitely more inclusive than five years ago. Wings at 2am may not be something you’ve done, but it’s less exclusionary than the ads from 2019.

A lack of focus can kill

I remember when I eventually was able to sign up to Facebook. I’d seen it spread online, and with each new wave (UK, then non-top universities, then secondary schools), I got more and more excited. But it started with clearly defined niches.

Uber, too, followed the same path. The early defined customer was the person who could afford and wanted to travel by limo. Forget being inclusive, this was highly exclusionary.

Focus is an essential part of running a startup. There are a million directions you can run. And without choosing a path and organising your team to run in the same direction, you’ll fall apart.

Let the anti-customer profile be a check and balance that you’re turning away the people who aren’t your customers.

The odds of attracting attention from your audience are already stacked against you. Don’t make it harder by trying to make your marketing accessible to everyone.

Not everyone is a customer of your brand – and that’s a great thing.

By trying to appeal to everyone, you’ll appeal to no-one.

You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”