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Question 1 — who is the target audience?

Not a segment: a person in a situation. The audience decides what counts as evidence.

As it is usually taught: define your target segment. "Purchasing managers in manufacturing, companies of 50 to 500 employees." Perhaps a persona with a name and a stock photo.

What it really asks of you: not a segment, but a person in a situation. A segment does not read your email. A person does, at a desk, on a particular day, with a problem, a boss, a budget, and a list of alternatives that already includes doing nothing.

Write the situation, not the demographics

For the person you want to reach, answer in plain sentences:

  • What do they believe today about products like yours? That belief is what your message must move.
  • What are they afraid of? Choosing wrong, looking careless, a supplier who disappears in year two.
  • What are their alternatives, including "keep the current supplier" and "decide nothing this year"?
  • Who else is in the room when the decision is made?

One purchase, several audiences

For equipment and services of any weight, there is no single reader. A technical evaluator, a commercial decision-maker and a safety officer read the same offer and see three different documents. They ask different questions in different languages: one wants the test data, one wants the terms and the track record, one wants the certificate numbers. Map them all. Decide which communication speaks to which person. A text that tries to speak to all three at once usually reaches none of them.

The audience decides what counts as evidence

This is the deepest layer of question one. An engineer is persuaded by measurements. A buyer is persuaded by references and terms. An authority is persuaded by documents in the right format with the right numbers. The same truth must be proven differently to each of them. Until you know who is reading, you do not know what evidence to lead with, and the message cannot be written.

This week

Take the next communication you plan to send. Write one person in a situation for it: current belief, fear, alternatives, who else is in the room. Half a page. If you cannot write it, you are not ready to write the message either.