Choose the market
before you choose the audience
A 30-minute course for campaign marketers who set targeting in ad platforms. Divide the whole market into segments, size them, choose one target segment with a scorecard, and turn it into a media audience for your next campaign or media brief.
Start the courseUS$39, one payment · instant access · 14-day money-back guarantee · Level: beginner to intermediate
The ad platform is deciding who you market to
A campaign is due next week. You open the ad platform and choose an industry, a company size and a few job functions.
Every one of those choices comes from the platform's list of options. None of them comes from a decision about which buyers your business can win. That decision is called market targeting, and it belongs before anyone opens an ad platform.
Ad platforms built their options to sell advertising to thousands of advertisers. The options describe companies in general terms. They don't tell you why your customers buy, which buyers you win most often, or which buyers the business wants this year.
Many campaign marketers learned the platform settings on the job. Far fewer were taught how to choose the market first, so the targeting follows whatever the platform offers.
- Your audience is built from the fields the platform offers, not from what buyers need.
- You segment your own customer list, so you only see the buyers you've already reached.
- You use the platform's audience estimate as the size of the market.
- Nobody has written down which segments the business is going after and which it has set aside, so every campaign starts from scratch.
Make the market decision first
Choose the Market Before the Audience is a 30-minute course that teaches market segmentation and market targeting, then shows you how to carry the decision into the ad platform.
You divide the whole market into segments, including buyers your business doesn't sell to yet. You size each segment, score them using your own won and lost deals, and recommend one target segment for the business stakeholder to agree. Then you build the media audience from that segment, and fix the places where the platform reaches too wide or too narrow.
| Decision | What it decides | Who makes it | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Market segmentation | The groups of buyers the market splits into | Marketing, with sales and product | Annual planning, or when the market changes |
| Market targeting | Which groups the business goes after, and which it sets aside | Marketing recommends, the business stakeholder agrees | Annual planning, before any campaign |
| Audience targeting | Who sees a particular ad | The campaign or media team | Each campaign |
What's in the course
Six written lessons of four to seven minutes each, and a knowledge check. Read it in one sitting, then use it on your next campaign.
Market targeting comes before audience targeting
Tell market segmentation, market targeting and audience targeting apart, and see who makes each decision and when.
Divide the market into segments
Start from the problem your product solves, find everyone in the market who has it, and write three to five segments as buyer needs.
Size each segment
Estimate the market size of each segment from national business counts, and its revenue potential from your deal values.
Choose the target segment
Score each segment on revenue potential, ability to win, competition, reach and fit with the business objective, using your won and lost deals. Record the segments you set aside.
Turn the segment into a media audience
Match the segment to the targeting options platforms offer, reach the buyer need and buying situation in other ways, and fix the gaps.
Put the target segment on the brief
Write the target segment line for your campaign or media brief, and get the business stakeholder to agree it in writing.
| Segment | Revenue | Win | Competition | Reach | Fit | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Food and beverage manufacturers | 3 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 21 |
| B. Wholesale distributors | 5 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 16 |
| C. Large manufacturers | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 12 |
| D. Retailers | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 13 |
| E. Small manufacturers | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 11 |
The tools, yours to keep and reuse
The Segment Finder
Where you list who in the market has the problem your product solves, what they use today, and the three to five segments you group them into.
The Targeting Scorecard
Where you record each segment's market size, revenue potential and win rate, score the segments, and note the ones you set aside.
The Segment-to-Audience Sheet
Where you mark what ad platforms can and can't target for your segment, how you'll reach the rest, and the gaps to fix.
Who this is for
This course is for campaign and media marketers who want their targeting to rest on a business decision, not on the options an ad platform offers.
- You work in paid media, digital, demand generation or campaigns, and you set audience targeting in ad platforms.
- You build audiences from industry, company size and job function, and want a reason for each choice.
- You brief agencies or media teams and want the audience on the brief to match a target segment the business has agreed.
- You've been asked to own a plan or a budget, and need to say which customers it's for.
Short course
Choose the Market Before the Audience
One-time payment · instant access · 14-day money-back guarantee
- Six written lessons, about 30 minutes in total, self-paced and yours to return to.
- The Segment Finder, the Targeting Scorecard and the Segment-to-Audience Sheet, as PDFs you can reuse on every campaign.
- One worked example carried the whole way through, from the whole market to a target segment line on a media brief.
- A knowledge check to confirm what you'll do differently.
A single payment with no renewal fee.
Want the strategy that builds on the target segment? B2B Marketing Fundamentals is US$199 at the founding price until 31 December 2026.
The evidence behind the course
Back2Marketing teaches marketers to make decisions they can defend. Every claim in this course is grounded in named research, and where a number is an estimate we say so on the page.
The definitions come from Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong's Principles of Marketing. Market segmentation divides a market into groups of buyers with distinct needs. Market targeting evaluates each segment and selects the ones to enter. In their marketing process, both decisions come before the marketing mix, and audience targeting sits inside promotion, one part of that mix.
Platform targeting data is less accurate than it looks. Ads reached the demographic group they were aimed at 59 per cent of the time, in a field test of more than 90 audience segments from 19 data brokers by Nico Neumann, Catherine Tucker and Timothy Whitfield, published in Marketing Science in 2019. That study covered consumer audiences rather than B2B company and job data, and the course says so.
The course also draws on Les Binet and Peter Field's analysis of the IPA Effectiveness Databank, and Byron Sharp's research at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, to show when tight targeting helps and when brand advertising needs broad reach.
Back2Marketing is new, and we would rather say that plainly than manufacture social proof you cannot trust. What you can judge is the work: the named evidence behind every claim, and a 14-day money-back guarantee on every course.
Questions, answered
No. The course assumes you know how to set up an audience in an ad platform. It teaches the two decisions that come before it: which segments the market divides into, and which one the business should go after. Lesson 5 then takes you back into the platform with a target segment to reach.
The three tools come with the course. The course teaches how to find segments outside your customer list, how to size a segment where you have no customers, how to judge your ability to win from your own deals, and how to check a platform audience against the segment.
Written. Six lessons of four to seven minutes each, plus three PDF tools and a knowledge check.
Yes. Lesson 4 uses an export of last year's won and lost deals. If you can't get one, ask sales which segments they win and lose most often, and score from that. For a segment with no deals yet, the course shows you how to score from the closest evidence and record that the score is an estimate.
A campaign aimed at the wrong buyers wastes the media budget, the agency fees and the team's time, and costs far more than US$39. For about the price of two coffees you get the method and three tools you'll reuse on every campaign. The aim is that the business sees you as the person who knows which customers to go after, not just the person who sets up the ads.
Short courses are included with the annual membership at US$290 a year. They are not included with the monthly plan, where they are bought separately. If you are already an annual member, open it from your library rather than paying again.
It is designed for B2B marketers. The worked example is an Australian software company, and the method works in any country: it sizes segments from national business counts, which most national statistics offices publish.
Before You Say Yes gets the business stakeholder to answer the strategy questions behind a request. This course is the work behind the market and audience questions in that brief. You can take either one first.
No. Fundamentals takes the target segment through the rest of the marketing strategy: how B2B buyers buy, positioning, creating and capturing demand, choosing channels and measuring results. It is the natural next step once you have a target segment.
A 14-day money-back guarantee applies. Email hello@back2marketing.com within 14 days and we will refund you.
Use it on your next campaign
In 30 minutes you divide your market into segments, choose one target segment with evidence, and build a media audience that reaches it. The target segment line goes straight onto your next campaign or media brief.
Do this before your next campaign and the targeting conversation moves from which job titles to tick to which buyers the business is going after, and why.
Evidence informs. Judgement decides.
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