How To Find Your Target Audience: Primary vs Secondary Wants

How to find your target audience?

The answer comes down to understanding the psychology of your buyers.

Before you can sell anything, you have to create a “customer avatar“.

This avatar tells you what’s important in your customer’s world.

(And the problems they’re facing).

You see, the human experience is ruled by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The bottom rungs are made of “the life force 8”.

These are the most basic primary wants such as:

• Companionship
• Being safe
• Surviving

Then on top of these layers come 9 secondary wants.

1. To be informed
2. Curiosity
3. Cleanliness of body and surroundings
4. Efficiency
5. Convenience
6. Dependability / quality
7. Expression of beauty and style
8. Economy / profit
9. Bargains

These 9 wants exist because we live in modern civilization.

Even though they’re important, we can ultimately do without them.

They just make life even more comfortable than it already is.

How Do These Wants Affect Decision Making?

When selling, you have to know what level your audience is at.

This tells you what their incentives are.

If someone is stuck at the base level, they don’t care as much about secondary wants.

They want their REAL problems solved first.

However, it’s rare for someone to have all the boxes checked.

Even when we pursue secondary wants, we can still have some primary wants unchecked.

i.e.

• An outgoing fat guy who wants to be in better shape.
• A successful CEO who sucks with women.
• A ripped gym bro who is broke.

Primary wants are always more urgent because they affect our lives more deeply.

You want to go through these checklists to find the most painful problem in *your prospect’s* world.

(Look at what they lack vs. what they’re abundant in).

It can’t be something they’re ok with… it has to be something they’re motivated to change.

This is how you speak their language + discover how to deliver the most CONTEXTUAL value.

A lopsided pyramid = huge opportunity.

Conclusion

Humans have both primary and secondary wants.

They determine our incentives.

When selling, you find your target audience by looking for market gaps among these incentives.

(The more lopsided the better).