Every new brand starts with the same temptation: “Let’s target everyone.”
More customers. Bigger market. Faster growth. Sounds logical.
It’s also one of the most expensive branding mistakes you can make.
Because when you try to speak to everyone, you end up resonating with no one.
As Seth Godin puts it, “If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.”
And yet, most early-stage brands design their product, pricing, messaging, website and marketing campaigns around a mythical creature called “the mass market.”
Here’s the real cost of being everything to everyone.
First, your brand becomes invisible.
Generic messaging creates generic perception. “Best quality. Affordable price. Great service.” Congratulations-you now sound like 10,000 other brands. In a noisy market, sameness is the fastest way to irrelevance.
Second, your marketing ROI collapses.
When your ICP is unclear, your ads target broad audiences, your content lacks sharpness, your sales team chases unqualified leads, and your CAC quietly bleeds. You spend more to convince less.
Third, your product loses focus.
You keep adding features for different customer types until your product becomes a Swiss Army knife that nobody knows how to use. As Steve Jobs said, “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”
Fourth, your brand positioning breaks.
Strong brands occupy a clear mental slot. Weak brands occupy a vague category. Or as Al Ries famously said, “Positioning is not what you do to the product. It’s what you do to the mind.” And confused minds don’t buy.
This is why defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is not a marketing exercise.
It’s a survival strategy.
Your ICP tells you:
– who you are for
– who you are not for
– what problem you exist to solve
– what language your customer actually understands
As Peter Drucker said, “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product sells itself.” That only happens when the customer is specific, not theoretical.
The smart play is focus > dominate > expand.
Start with a narrow segment. Win that niche. Become memorable there. Build trust, case studies, and brand recall. Then expand horizontally into adjacent segments.
Even Amazon didn’t start with “everything.”
It started with books.
Even Netflix didn’t start with “entertainment.” It started with DVD rentals.
Scale comes from depth first, not width.
Because in branding, clarity beats cleverness.
Focus beats force.
And relevance beats reach.
Trying to be everything to everyone makes you available.
Choosing your ICP makes you desirable.
And in the long run, only desirable brands build defensible businesses.