“‘EVERYBODY’ CANNOT BE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE” – JBDC
Eager to make sales, some business owners are casting a wide net to reel in as much leads as possible.  Speaking at a recent Jamaica Business Development Corporation (JBDC) Virtual Biz Zone, Christopher Derrell, addressed this misconception plaguing Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs). “There is a statement that businesses will say when somebody asks them who is their ideal target audience. Some of them will say, boy, we serve everybody, or our ideal customer is everyone, or everyone is in our audience.
Use the transcript to Write a clean, fact-based business news article. Avoid fluff. Use active voice, tight sentences, and clear subheadings. Include real data, direct quote and context on why this matters now: Speaker: Christopher Derrell, Head of Web Development at Adtelligent
Event: JBDC’s Biz Zone Webinar
Topic: Audience Engagement: Cashing in on likes and shares
Attendees: Micro, Small and medium sized enterprises
Date: July 15, 2025

my assumption is that many of you are business owners, the majority, and if you're not you want (5:42) to become one. You may have a formal business registered with the company's office or you might (5:47) have what is right now a side hustle that you want to make a little more formal.
But the beauty is (5:52) that regardless of however you are making money or plan to make money, the marketing funnel remains (5:58) the exact same. Everybody follows this funnel before they purchase from you
Everybody goes through this funnel and everybody who does business with you goes through (7:30) this funnel.
A lot of times the (11:24) salesperson, and you guys are your salesperson, you focus on the end user, but you do not think about (11:30) who the customer is.
And sometimes you have to remember that the customer is not the end user.
So this is one of the core issues of identifying your audience. You may be looking at people who (12:02) eat the birthday cake that you create from your cake shop, but you're not looking at who's buying (12:07) the birthday cake, right?
our user is not always your customer.
Each person who interacts with your brand has many (13:01) different things that make up who they are. You have salary level, you have their personal (13:07) interests, their comfort with technology, education level, lifestyle and hobbies, jobs. (13:13) So these are all on the outside, right? The peripheral, they're on the outside.
(13:17) And then you have things that are even more descriptive of them. Their beliefs, very important. (13:23) Their age, their location, where they live, their ethnicity, like what is their background (13:29) culturally? What is their family situation? Everybody who interacts with your brand (13:34) is a complex person.
And that's very important to note, because when you're doing your messaging, (13:42) if you don't understand that there's so many facets to them, then you can easily miss them (13:46) with how you do your messaging.
there is a statement that businesses will say when somebody asks them who is their (27:32) ideal target audience. Some of them will say, boy, yeah, we serve everybody, (27:38) or our ideal customer is everyone, or everyone is in our audience.
That doesn't make any sense. (27:45) And I really hope you guys do not say that after today's call, because that is a crazy (27:52) statement to make. Your ideal customer cannot be everybody.
You're going to put yourself in (27:58) trouble, because then you won't be able to focus your shot. I've heard it described like this. (28:05) You have limited ammo in your gun, you have limited shots that you can take.
And when you (28:11) say something like everyone is in our audience, you're basically randomly firing and hoping that (28:19) it will hit a target, right? When you have limited ammo, and that ammo is your money, (28:24) your marketing spend, it's very important that as you continue to do business, you're able to (28:31) identify this is my ideal customer

But it is not okay to say my ideal customer is everybody. That cannot be. And so by the end of (29:51) this, one of the other things I'm going to ask is about some of you and your businesses, and who (29:56) your ideal customer is.

How does analytics play into your audience? (3:52) Some of you may know, but many of the tools that you use online that your audience interacts with (3:58) you on, so Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, once you have business pages set up, (4:06) you will be able to see a bit of analytics on who is interacting with your content. (4:13) Analytics is probably the hidden key to a lot of what you are trying to do right now in your (4:20) business. Because most of you would either be trying to get more qualified leads, so more people (4:26) coming through the door who are purchasing, so increase the quantity of sales, or you're trying (4:31) to increase the amount of sales that existing customers have.

And so what I'm pointing you to is that there's more information in your data, (13:20) even in the little analytics that you have, that might go against your own assumption. And you have (13:25) to be very open to the fact that you don't have a complete view of who your audience is, (13:31) so that you can search it out. I hope that that makes sense.
So by having better data, and a better (17:51) understanding of your target audience, you can also plan for yourself as a business better.
(17:56) Right, you have a return on your marketing spend that you can work with when you're budgeting. (18:02) So analytics is important guys, it might be slightly boring to some of you. (18:06) But it's very important because it allows you to see whether your hypothesis is true or not.

there is a statement that businesses will say when somebody asks them who is their (27:32) ideal target audience. Some of them will say, boy, yeah, we serve everybody, (27:38) or our ideal customer is everyone, or everyone is in our audience.
That doesn't make any sense. (27:45) And I really hope you guys do not say that after today's call, because that is a crazy (27:52) statement to make. Your ideal customer cannot be everybody.
You're going to put yourself in (27:58) trouble, because then you won't be able to focus your shot. I've heard it described like this. (28:05) You have limited ammo in your gun, you have limited shots that you can take.
And when you (28:11) say something like everyone is in our audience, you're basically randomly firing and hoping that (28:19) it will hit a target, right? When you have limited ammo, and that ammo is your money, (28:24) your marketing spend, it's very important that as you continue to do business, you're able to (28:31) identify this is my ideal customer

But it is not okay to say my ideal customer is everybody. That cannot be. And so by the end of (29:51) this, one of the other things I'm going to ask is about some of you and your businesses, and who (29:56) your ideal customer is.

How does analytics play into your audience? (3:52) Some of you may know, but many of the tools that you use online that your audience interacts with (3:58) you on, so Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, once you have business pages set up, (4:06) you will be able to see a bit of analytics on who is interacting with your content. (4:13) Analytics is probably the hidden key to a lot of what you are trying to do right now in your (4:20) business. Because most of you would either be trying to get more qualified leads, so more people (4:26) coming through the door who are purchasing, so increase the quantity of sales, or you're trying (4:31) to increase the amount of sales that existing customers have.

And so what I'm pointing you to is that there's more information in your data, (13:20) even in the little analytics that you have, that might go against your own assumption. And you have (13:25) to be very open to the fact that you don't have a complete view of who your audience is, (13:31) so that you can search it out. I hope that that makes sense.

So by having better data, and a better (17:51) understanding of your target audience, you can also plan for yourself as a business better.
(17:56) Right, you have a return on your marketing spend that you can work with when you're budgeting. (18:02) So analytics is important guys, it might be slightly boring to some of you. (18:06) But it's very important because it allows you to see whether your hypothesis is true or not.

You're trying to identify your ideal customer. So instead of trying to invest in 50 different (27:23) channels to say, we're going to make sure we take orders via phone call, WhatsApp, email, (27:31) website, start by focussing on your main way to get bookings in or purchases done (27:37) and then expand from there.
But don't try to spread yourself thin and say, we're going to (27:41) cater to everybody again. And then you end up dividing your efforts and the systems don't (27:46) talk to each other. So again, leave the lady who lives at the top of Blue Mountain and uses a (27:52) banger phone who makes her orders by a phone call for now.
That is not your ideal audience. (28:03) One of the things that I also want to mention is that your audience is going to be changing. (28:08) Your audience will age with you.
If you've been in business for five to 10 years, the people who (28:14) started purchasing from you five to 10 years ago are 10 years older. Right. So they're either (28:19) ageing out depending on your service and you're getting new persons or they're ageing with you (28:25) and still using your product or service and you have to figure out how to appl