TL;DR
A founder built an amazing product but tried to market it to everyone. When you talk to everyone, no one listens. Great products fail when messaging is too generic. Start small, focus on one audience, and make them feel the product was built just for them. Once you win that group, expand from there.
I met with a founder this week who’s building a truly revolutionary product. The kind of thing that could genuinely disrupt an entire industry. Brilliant technology. Solid team. Real innovation.
“Who’s your ICP?” I asked.
“Everyone,” he said. And he wasn’t being glib. He meant it. The person at home who might use it once a year. The enterprise institution that would use it thousands of times a day. Everyone in between.
Then I looked at his website.
Generic copy. Stale positioning. Zero specialization. The kind of messaging that could apply to literally any product in any category. You know the type: “Streamline your workflow. Boost productivity. Transform your business.”
This is where great products go to die.
When your messaging is for everyone, it resonates with no one. Your prospect lands on your site, scans for three seconds, and thinks “this isn’t for me” because nothing tells them it is.
I told him he needs to take a page out of the Facebook playbook.
Today, Facebook is for everyone. Your grandmother uses it. Fortune 500 companies use it. Teenagers use it. But that’s not how it started.
When Facebook rolled out, it was exclusively for students at Harvard. Then it expanded to other Ivy League schools. Then other colleges. Each expansion was deliberate, targeted, and made the new users feel special.
Those early adopters didn’t just use Facebook. They evangelized it. Why? Because it was built specifically for them. It understood their world, spoke their language, and solved their specific problems. The exclusivity wasn’t a bug; it was the entire feature.
Your founder instinct might be screaming, “But my product really can serve everyone!” Maybe it can. But your go-to-market strategy can’t start there.
Here’s the brutal truth about launching products with “everyone” as your ICP:
When you try to speak to everyone, you end up with the lowest common denominator messaging. You strip out anything specific because it might alienate someone. You remove jargon because not everyone will understand it. You generalize benefits because different audiences care about different things.
The result? Marketing that’s so bland it’s invisible.
And here’s the part that makes founders uncomfortable: In order for your messaging to create a “heck yes, this is for me” reaction, it will ALWAYS cause someone else to think “this is not for me.”
That isn’t just okay. That’s the entire point.
Someone landing on your website and immediately thinking “whoa, this isn’t for me” is not a bug. It’s a feature. Because if nobody visits your site and says “this isn’t for me,” then the people it IS for are also likely not to recognize it’s for them.
Specificity requires exclusion. It’s not a side effect, it’s the mechanism that makes it work.
The psychology here is critical. People don’t buy products that “could work for anyone.” They buy products that feel custom-built for their specific situation. Even if the underlying technology is identical, the perceived fit drives purchasing decisions.
This is why the same CRM platform creates different landing pages for real estate agents, insurance brokers, and SaaS sales teams. The product is the same. The messaging is radically different. Each audience needs to feel like you understand their unique challenges.
If you’re rolling out a new product and can’t narrow your ICP, you have two options:
Option 1: Pick one specific segment to dominate first.
Launch exclusively for enterprise financial institutions. Or mid-market healthcare providers. Or solo consultants. Make them feel special. Build features they specifically requested. Create case studies featuring companies just like them. Own that segment completely before expanding.
Stripe started with developers. Not “anyone who processes payments.” Developers. They built documentation developers loved, APIs developers praised, and a developer experience that made integration painless. Only after dominating that segment did they expand to broader markets.
Option 2: Create distinct experiences for each major segment.
If you genuinely can’t narrow your initial launch, at a minimum, you need separate messaging and landing pages for each audience. When an enterprise buyer clicks your ad, they should land on a page that speaks directly to enterprise concerns: security, compliance, integration, and support. When a small-business owner clicks, they should see pricing transparency, ease of use, and quick setup.
This isn’t just good marketing. It’s respecting that different buyers have fundamentally different needs, concerns, and decision-making processes.
The Shift
Stop trying to be everything to everyone on day one.
Your product might eventually serve diverse audiences. Your initial go-to-market strategy cannot. Pick your beachhead. Dominate it. Then expand from a position of strength.
Or at minimum, create messaging so specific to each segment that they feel like you built the product exclusively for them, even if you didn’t.
The companies winning in 2025 understand this viscerally. While their competitors are crafting bland, generic messaging that “doesn’t exclude anyone,” they’re creating laser-focused campaigns that make specific audiences feel seen, understood, and special.
Exclusivity isn’t elitism. It’s strategic focus. It’s the difference between “we can help anyone” and “we specifically help people exactly like you.”
When you tell everyone your product is for them, you’re actually telling everyone it’s not.
Your next move: Pull up your homepage right now. Show it to someone in your target market without any context. If they can’t immediately tell it was built for people exactly like them, your messaging is too generic. Fix it before you waste another dollar on marketing.
