Why “Everyone” Is a Bad Target Market

Hey there,

Quick question before we start: who’s your customer?

If your answer had the word “everyone,” “anyone,” or “all” in it — stop. We need to talk. For example: “anyone who wants to start a business,” or “everyone who needs help scheduling social media posts.”

I’ve lost count of how many business plans open their market section this exact way. “Our product is for everyone.” “Anyone could use this.”

Here’s the thing nobody tells you: “everyone” isn’t a target market. It’s what founders write when they haven’t picked one yet — or aren’t sure about it yet.

And the tricky part? The instinct behind it makes complete sense.

The instinct that quietly works against you

Nobody sits down and decides to target everyone. It just comes out that way.

You’ve built something you believe in, and you can picture all the people it might help. So when someone asks, “Who’s it for?” the answer becomes, “Well… anyone, really.”

And a bigger market just sounds better. More people, more sales, more room to grow. Next to that, picking one specific group can feel like shrinking the opportunity on purpose.

So you keep it wide.

Feels ambitious. Feels safe.

But that safety is an illusion. A message built for everyone reaches no one — so the real move is to get specific. The good news? It’s simpler than it sounds.

So how do you find your target market?

It’s not a big research project. It’s really just narrowing.

Here’s how to do it, one step at a time.

1. Start broad, then cut.

Begin with the wide group and keep slicing. Say you tutor. “Students” is too wide. Cut it to high schoolers. Cut again to high schoolers struggling with math. Keep going until you’re looking at a specific group, not a crowd.

(A meal-kit business does the same: “busy people” becomes “parents who get home at 6 with hungry kids and no plan.”)

2. Find who’s hurting most.

Inside that group, someone always feels the problem harder than the rest. For one kid, a bad grade is annoying. For another, it’s a nightly fight with a stressed-out parent who’s running out of ideas.

Go after the ones in real pain — they’re the ones who’ll pay, and pay first.

3. Use their words, not yours.

Now listen to how they actually describe the problem. A parent doesn’t search for “academic support services.” They type “my kid gave up on math.” The words your customer already uses are the words your message should use.

You’ll find them in reviews, Reddit threads, and comment sections — go read what real people are saying and borrow their language.

Do this, and your target market stops being a vague category. It becomes a specific person, with a specific problem, in words you didn’t have to invent.

And that’s exactly the person you should be building your plan around.

So what’s next?

Now go back to your own business plan and look at the target market section.

If it says something like “for everyone who needs…” or “small businesses of all kinds,” — there’s the trap, sitting right in your plan.

Fix it the way we just did: rewrite it around one real person, in one real situation.

That’s also where Upmetrics can help. It helps you turn a sharper customer choice into a clearer target market, marketing, and competitor section — so your business plan doesn’t quietly slide back to “everyone.”

Until the next time,

Happy business planning 🙂