VIP Milestone 2: Research, Segment and Validate Your Audience

VIP Pro Work Template — 20 Milestones: From Project to Platform

Move from a plausible audience to a defensible audience decision

The free Milestone 2 pages help you select and describe a first audience. This VIP implementation does not repeat that work. It tests the decision against evidence, segment differences, channel realities and the actual shape of your project.

Begin with your completed Audience Foundation Record.

1. Build a three-level audience map

Separate the people who may care about your work into three levels:

• Primary segment: The first group the project is designed, described and tested for.
• Secondary segment: A credible next group that may benefit without controlling Version 1.
• Adjacent audience: People who may follow, recommend or occasionally purchase but are not central to the project decision.

This prevents secondary possibilities from weakening the main message.

2. Use a situation-based job lens

Do not reduce the audience to a personality profile. Define what they are trying to accomplish when they encounter the project.

When ______ happens, they want to ______, so they can ______, without ______.

Then test four dimensions:

• Functional job: What must they do or complete?
• Emotional job: How do they want to feel?
• Social job: How do they want to be seen or understood?
• Progress barrier: What makes the change difficult now?

3. Grade the evidence instead of counting mentions

Not all evidence deserves equal weight. Use this hierarchy:

1. Direct behaviour: Purchases, sign-ups, repeated usage, completed requests or observed actions.
2. Direct conversations: Interviews, support exchanges, consultations and detailed audience responses.
3. Owned-community patterns: Repeated questions, comments, poll responses and engagement from people you can identify as relevant.
4. External community behaviour: Repeated questions and frustrations across credible public communities.
5. Comparable-project evidence: Reviews, positioning, audience response and gaps around similar projects.
6. Search and language signals: Repeated phrases that indicate awareness or intent.
7. Assumption: A reasonable idea that still requires validation.

AI-generated descriptions are not evidence. AI may organize, compare or summarize evidence you supply.

4. Compare three candidate segments

Score each candidate from 1 to 5. Add a short evidence note beside every score.

A high total is not enough. Reject any segment that requires claims, expertise, access or project changes you cannot support.

5. Test audience–project fit

Review the current project, not the ideal future version.

• Does its format match how the segment learns, listens, reads, creates or buys?
• Does its complexity match their current ability?
• Does it solve enough of the stated situation to be credible?
• Does it require more time, money or trust than they can reasonably give?
• Does it contain material that belongs to a different segment?

Use Find Your Voice to align language and format. Use Find Your Brand to align the public promise and project home.

6. Test audience–channel fit

An audience is not practically usable if you cannot reach, observe or learn from it. For each likely channel, record:

• why the audience uses it;
• what format performs a useful role there;
• whether you already have access or must build it;
• the cost in time, money and consistency;
• what signal would show genuine interest rather than passive reach.

The best first audience is often the strongest intersection of need, fit, evidence and access—not the largest theoretical market.

7. Run contradiction and exclusion tests

Contradiction test

Write three facts that would weaken or disprove your audience choice. Examples:

• They solve the problem in a way that makes this project unnecessary.
• The format conflicts with their normal behaviour.
• The situation is interesting but not important enough to act on.

Exclusion test

Complete: “This Version 1 is not primarily for ______ because ______.”

A useful exclusion makes the project clearer without insulting or dismissing adjacent people.

8. Create and test three message versions

Write three short descriptions:

1. Situation-led: Begin with what is happening.
2. Result-led: Begin with the desired change.
3. Barrier-led: Begin with what keeps them stuck.

Show the messages to relevant people or place them in a low-risk test. Ask:

• What do you think this is?
• Who does it sound like it is for?
• What feels most relevant?
• What is unclear or unconvincing?
• What would you expect next?

Do not ask only whether they “like” it. Recognition and clarity are more useful than politeness.

9. Run a compact validation sprint

Gather five to ten meaningful feedback samples from people who plausibly match the primary segment. This can include conversations, structured replies, support history or a controlled message test.

Use the same core questions so responses can be compared:

1. What are you currently trying to accomplish?
2. What makes that difficult?
3. What have you already tried?
4. What would a useful result look like?
5. What would make you trust or reject a project like this?

Record patterns, disagreements and surprises. Do not erase evidence simply because it conflicts with your preferred project.

10. Use AI without inventing certainty

11. Make the decision

Decision rules

• Proceed: Evidence, fit and access are strong enough to build for this audience.
• Revise: The audience is credible, but the project, wording or delivery must change.
• Hold: Evidence is too weak, access is unrealistic or the project does not solve the stated situation.

Related Core Path resources

• Find Your Voice Audience Situation Worksheet
• Who This Is For
• Brand Foundation Template
• Your First Visitor Journey

Previous milestone: VIP Milestone 1: Validate and Position Your Publishing Project

Free foundation: Milestone 2 explanation and 7-Day Audience Clarity Plan.