Read time: 5 minutes

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

Imagine you post your business idea and see likes + comments. Congrats!

You’re getting feedback on your business.

But wait. What if all this excitement is from people who would never buy from you? How would you know?

So today we’ll cover two things:

1) How to set up your content so you get feedback from the right target customer

2) How to read results to see if the feedback is coming from your customer (or from random people you ignore)

Back by popular demand, this is our 6th issue in the Micro-MVP series (here’s an overview if you missed the Micro-MVP explanation).

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

A message from Vitally

Want more revenue per customer.… and get free Airpods?

It’s hard to keep up with more customers as your business grows: onboarding, tracking renewals, upselling opportunities… it can be overwhelming.

Enter Vitally.

Vitally is the leading platform to make your Customer Success team more effective, optimize your revenue, and give your customers best-in-class experiences.

This means: A growing bottom line for your business, streamlined Customer Success operations, and happy customers.

Interested to learn more?

If you influence CS decisions at a B2B SaaS company with 50-1,000 employees, click below to take a qualified demo (and get a free pair of Airpods Pro) today!

I wanted to help marketers. But I missed.

So I was sitting in a tea house in Vietnam. I just finished reading this book on how to keep people’s attention.

[By the way, I don’t recommend that book unless you’re already an advanced storyteller/copywriter. Reply “attention” and I’ll share other resources].

I was excited by the tactics in the book!

I hadn’t heard of a lot of them and I was dying to share it with the marketing community:
• Copywriters
• Advertisers
• Marketing strategists
etc

So I choose a marketing related example to hook all marketers: ads!

I write my hook. And post!

Then I get a text from my friend, Grammar Hippy:

Hey man, you know your thread is ONLY aimed at advertisers, right? You’re not getting the target market you wanted.

The wrong people were reading my content! It made me realize how easy it is to mistarget your audience with your content.

So learn from my mistakes.

Here’s 4 tips to make sure the feedback you’re getting on your content is from your target customer:

1. Target your hook

Imagine your content EXACTLY solves a pain for a specific customer.

But the hook brings in the wrong person!

Your customer will never see your content.

Here’s a few tips to help you better target your hook to your customer (and get the opinions of people who actually have the problem your business is solving):

• Put the pain in the hook itself

• Name your target customer in your hook

• Reference a situation only they would be in

• Use terminology that speaks to your target customer

2. Pay the platform to target your audience

When you pay the platform (LinkedIn, Instagram etc) to boost your content, you can choose who gets to see it.

Here’s an example from Instagram. You can choose who sees your post!

Choose your target customer by:
• Age
• Gender
• Interests
• Geography

3. After you post, use analytics to confirm who’s reading

Certain platforms let you look at who has viewed your content (so you can tell if you reached your target customer).

LinkedIn is great for post analytics.

You can see:

• Job titles
• Location
• Industries
• Company size

Here’s a peak behind the scenes at the analytics on one of my LinkedIn posts:

These demographics are critical because you need feedback from potential customers. Not just anyone.

4. After you post, run a profile scan

When you don’t have analytics (cough*Twitter!*cough), I run a profile scan (then eventually post the same content on a different platform to get the analytics).

A profile scan is not scientific, it’s directional. It’s the best we have.

Here’s an example from Twitter: Click “likes” to see all the profiles of people who “liked” your content.

Now you get a full list of everyone who’s “liked” your post. Scan the list and look for your target customer. In my case it’s founders.

Looks like there’s a higher concentration of founders for that tweet compared to my baseline, so we’re on track.

Note: a lot of people don’t add their titles so this is only directional. Compared to other posts does this feel like a higher concentration of people

Create content tests that resonate with your target. Don’t get feedback from random people.

Boom! That’s it.

If you found this helpful, please forward this email to 1 friend or colleague. They'll appreciate you and you'll help grow the community.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
Twitter
LinkedIn
New! Follow me on: Instagram

If you liked this post, and want more like it, sign up for free:

🚀 Work with Brian

Whenever you’re ready there’s 2 ways I can help you:

1. Struggling to find out how to get customers to want your business? Get free time with me. I’ll walk you through the Micro-MVP process.

2. Promote your business to 13,500+ business owners by sponsoring this newsletter.

🛠️ Outlier Links

Thanks again to this week’s sponsor, Vitally (the platform to streamline your customer success).

🧪 Previous Micro-MVP Issues

How to get views on your posts (even with 0 followers)

How to read Micro-MVP testing results

Uncover your customer’s biggest pain (by stealing from Facebook posts)

When NOT to use a Micro-MVP

🧑🏻‍💻 Clickworthy Content I found this week

11 solopreneurs doing millions in revenue

How Snowdevil snowboards pivoted into Shopify

How to read a Balance Sheet (simplified by a CFO)

🧔🏻‍♂️ Get to know Brian

I’m sending this issue to you from a coffee shop in Lisbon. It’s a beautiful city.

I just started an Instagram this week to record video versions of tips and lessons. Follow me (@TheBrianFOConnor) to get them first!

🙋 Vote: Next Week’s Topic

People like you make this community amazing.

So I want to give you the opportunity to pick the topic that will help you grow your business the most (vote to choose next week’s topic below):