How to Define Your Target Customer

Every Product Manager must be able to answer the question "who is your target customer?" 

Discovering that target customer is a subject for another post. But equally important is how to communicate your target customer definition internally. So many times I've failed to do this, either because I provide too little information, or too much.

A Goldilocks balance involves two things:

1. Specific examples of target customers
2. Specific examples of non-target customers

Example

Our target customer:

1. is a company that sells access to a web or mobile app that is custom-built, not white-labeled
2. is an employee who has never held a job as a developer, but has written or edited simple code (e.g. HTML/JS/SQL/Liquid) on the side.

Examples of target customers:

• Shiya Luo, Senior Director R&D at Wavely
• Jae Gage, Customer Success Program Manager at Segment
• JR Oliveria, Senior Product Manager at Seasoned
• Rob Kaczanowki, Growth Marketer at Wildbit

Examples of non-target customers:

• Allycia of Pollfish (Pollfish meets criteria #1, but Allycia is has never written or edited simple code (e.g. HTML/JS/SQL/Liquid).
• Priscilla of RadarFirst (RadarFirst meets #1, but Priscilla has never written or edited simple code (e.g. HTML/JS/SQL/Liquid)