Why being specific is better than being everywhere
The counterintuitive truth about reaching more of the right people by doing less.
Trudi Saul | Vennd
I had a conversation with a client recently - they were exhausted. They were posting on Instagram every day, sending a monthly newsletter, showing up on LinkedIn, occasionally running Facebook ads, and toying with the idea of starting a podcast.
Theoretically doing everything right. Yet nothing was working.
When I asked them who all of this was for, they paused. Then said: "Well... everyone who needs what I do."
There's the problem.
“When you try to speak to everyone, you end up resonating with no one. Specificity isn’t a limitation - it’s a superpower.”
The everywhere trap
There's a particular kind of marketing paralysis that hits small business owners hard. You see advice telling you to be on every platform, post every day, try every format. And because you're genuinely trying to grow, you attempt all of it.
But here's what actually happens: you spread yourself thin, your message becomes generic because it has to appeal to everyone, and you burn out before anything has time to work. The algorithm didn't beat you. Trying to be everywhere did.
The businesses that build real traction - especially small ones without big budgets - almost always do the opposite. They get specific. Uncomfortably specific, sometimes. And that specificity is exactly what makes them magnetic to the right people.
What specific actually means
Being specific isn't just about narrowing your target audience, though that's part of it. It's about having a clear point of view - knowing not just who you help, but what you believe, and saying that out loud in your marketing.
Generic marketing sounds like: "We help businesses grow." Specific marketing sounds like: "We help time-poor trade business owners get off the tools and back in control of their time." One of those makes someone feel seen. The other makes them scroll past.
The more clearly you can articulate who you are for and what you stand for, the easier every marketing decision becomes - including which channels are actually worth your time.
Questions worth sitting with
Who is your marketing actually written for - a real person, or a vague idea of everyone?
If your ideal client read your last three posts, would they recognise themselves in them?
Are you on certain platforms because your audience is there, or because everyone said you should be?
Could someone read your website and immediately know if you're right for them — or not?
The channel question
Once you know specifically who you're talking to, the channel question becomes a lot simpler. You stop asking "should I be on TikTok?" and start asking "is the person I just described spending time on TikTok?" Sometimes the answer is yes. Often it isn't - and that's useful information.
A B2B consultant probably isn't winning on Instagram. A visual product brand probably isn't building meaningful relationships through LinkedIn. Email - wildly underrated - remains one of the highest-converting channels for trust-building over time, because you own that list and no algorithm can take it away.
The point isn't which channel is best. The point is that the right channel follows from knowing your audience. Not the other way around.
Doing less, better
What if instead of posting every day across four platforms, you posted three times a week on the one platform where your people actually are - and made those three posts genuinely good? What if your newsletter went out once a month but every single edition was worth opening?
Consistency beats frequency. Clarity beats volume. And one piece of content that makes the right person feel genuinely seen is worth more than a month of content that reaches everyone and moves no one.
That's the counterintuitive truth about specificity. When you get clearer about who you're for, you don't reach fewer people. You reach fewer of the wrong ones - and more of exactly who you're looking for.