Most people think marketing is about being creative.
It’s not.
The 40-40-20 rule (one of the oldest in direct marketing) tells us that the success of any promotion comes down to three factors. 40% is your offer. 40% is your audience targeting. And 20% is your creative.
And all successful marketers use swipe files and proven formulas to come up with the creative.
Here’s what David Ogilvy had to say about originality
The general advertisers and their agencies know almost nothing for sure, because they cannot measure the results of their advertising. They worship at the altar of creativity, which really means ‘originality’: The most dangerous word in the lexicon of advertising
That’s not to say I don’t copywritng and creative isn’t important. I invest a lot of time and money studying copywriting and writing about it on this site. But the best copy won’t help you sell if the right people never see it.
In this post, I want to talk about one half of that 80% that almost nobody gets right: knowing where your audience pays attention. Not just who they are. Where they are.
That’s the piece of B2B audience research that consistently changes how a firm’s marketing performs.
The problem: You know who your audience is. You don’t know where they are.
There’s a version of “knowing your audience” that feels complete but isn’t.
You know your ideal client is a managing partner at a mid-size accounting firm, 45-55, based in the Midwest. You’ve built out an ICP. You’ve identified their pain points. You know they’re on LinkedIn.
That’s a start. But that’s not really knowing your audience.
Demographic targeting is the minimum required to point your marketing in roughly the right direction. What it doesn’t tell you is how to actually reach them.
Yes, they are on the major platforms – LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. But the biggest platforms are also the noisiest.
And just because they are present doesn’t mean they are paying attention. That’s why we have terms like “doomscrolling”, “brain rot”, and “stopping the scroll.”
Your audience’s attention is not distributed evenly across all the places they technically “are.” Some content they ignore. Some they scroll past. Some they actually read, forward to colleagues, and quote in conversations.
The difference between the content they ignore and the content they actually engage with comes down to source, format, topic, and context (this is a big one). Most firms have no idea which of those factors actually matter for their specific audience.
That’s the problem B2B audience research solves. Not “are we targeting the right people?” (you probably are), but “are we showing up where those people actually pay attention?”
Where most firms go wrong
The typical approach is to go where you think your audience should be, based on conventional wisdom about your industry.
“B2B buyers are on LinkedIn.” So you post on LinkedIn.
“Accounting firms trust trade journals.” So you place an ad in an accounting publication.
“Our clients go to this conference.” So you sponsor the conference.
None of these are wrong, necessarily. But they’re based on assumptions. And assumptions about where your audience pays attention are almost always incomplete, and often wrong in ways that matter.
The specific newsletter your ideal client actually reads might have a fraction of the reach of a major trade publication. But if they forward it to their colleagues and cite it in meetings, a single mention there might do more than a year of posts on a platform they technically use but barely notice.
That’s the gap. Demographic targeting tells you who to reach. Channel research tells you where they’re actually reachable. Most firms do the first and skip the second.
The reframe: Knowing your audience means knowing where they pay attention
The shift I want to offer isn’t complicated, but it does require doing something most firms don’t do: getting specific about your clients’ media consumption habits.
Not just “LinkedIn and trade journals.” Specific.
What newsletters do they actually open and read? What podcasts do they listen to during their commute? Which experts and content creators in their space do they follow and share? What publications do they trust when they’re trying to make a decision?
That’s the information that changes how you market.
When you know specifically where your audience pays attention, a few things shift that are worth understanding.
You stop guessing. Instead of spreading your marketing across every channel that seems relevant, you concentrate it where it will actually land.
You stop competing on the same crowded ground as everyone else. Most of your competitors are showing up in the same obvious places. When you know where your audience actually pays attention, you often find channels your competitors have completely overlooked.
And you get introduced by someone your audience already trusts. This is the part that changes your results most. When you show up inside a newsletter your ideal client already reads, or get featured on a podcast they already listen to, you’re not fighting for attention. You’re borrowing credibility from a source they’ve already decided to trust.
The math on that is very different from cold outreach on a noisy platform.
The attention map
Every person in your target audience has what I’d call an attention map. A set of sources (newsletters, podcasts, associations, publications, LinkedIn creators, communities) that they actually pay attention to. That they read, listen to, and share.
Most of it is invisible to you right now.
Your goal is to map it. Then show up inside it.
That’s B2B audience research in its simplest form. And when you do it, it almost always turns up 3-5 channels you’ve never marketed through. Places your ideal clients are already paying attention, and your competitors are not.
How to do it: Three steps to mapping where your audience pays attention
Step 1: Map where your audience actually consumes information
Start with what you already have access to: your existing clients.
Your best clients are a sample of your ideal clients. And if you’ve worked with them closely, you have more information about their media habits than you realize.
How to do it:
First, review your recent conversations. When a client mentioned something they’d read or heard (an article, a podcast episode, a LinkedIn post), where did it come from? Start a running list. You’re looking for patterns.
Second, look at their LinkedIn profiles and activity. What content do they share? What podcasts or newsletters do they mention? What associations or groups are they members of? LinkedIn is a surprisingly useful window into what people in your target market are actually paying attention to.
Third, and most directly, ask them. This can happen naturally during onboarding conversations, annual reviews, or any touchpoint where you’re having a real conversation. “What are you reading these days? What podcasts do you listen to? What industry publications do you find most useful?”
Most clients are happy to answer. And the answers are usually more specific than you’d expect.
What you’re building:
A concrete list of the newsletters, podcasts, publications, communities, and LinkedIn creators your ideal clients actually pay attention to. Not a vague sense of the category. Specific names.
Bad example: “Our audience is on LinkedIn and probably reads industry trade journals.”
Good example: “Our clients regularly mention The Accountant’s Daily, subscribe to The CFO Playbook newsletter, and follow three specific LinkedIn creators in the M&A advisory space. We know this because we’ve asked during onboarding and checked their profiles.”
The difference isn’t the channel. It’s the specificity. Vague targeting produces vague results.
What to look for:
You’re looking for overlap. Sources that come up again and again across multiple clients. A newsletter that four different clients mentioned. A podcast that three of your top accounts listen to. A LinkedIn creator who keeps showing up in their activity feeds.
That overlap is signal. It tells you where your audience concentrates its attention, not just where they theoretically exist.
Common mistake to avoid:
Don’t stop at the first layer. Your clients might mention the obvious places first – the major trade publications, the biggest industry conferences. Keep asking. The most useful information usually comes in the second conversation, when they mention the smaller, more niche sources they actually trust most.
Step 2: Use that map to make real marketing decisions
Audience intelligence is only valuable if it changes what you do.
Once you know where your audience actually pays attention, you have something you didn’t have before: a clear basis for deciding where to show up. The question shifts from “where should we market?” to “which of the places our audience already trusts can we show up in?”
How to do it:
Look at your attention map and ask, for each source: is there a way for us to show up here?
For newsletters: Can we advertise? Can we contribute an article? Can we get a mention from the editor?
For podcasts: Can we pitch ourselves as a guest? The host probably gets dozens of pitches. But a pitch that references something specific about the show (an episode you listened to, a topic their listeners care about) gets read differently than a generic guest pitch.
For LinkedIn creators: Can we engage thoughtfully with their content? Build a genuine relationship? Co-create something?
For communities and associations: Are we active members? Are there speaking opportunities, sponsorships, or contribution opportunities we haven’t pursued?
👎 Bad example: Posting consistently on LinkedIn because “that’s where B2B buyers are.”
👍 Good example: Reaching out to the host of a podcast that your last three clients all mentioned listening to, with a topic angle built specifically around their listeners’ biggest pain points.
The difference is not the channel. It’s that the approach is based on evidence, not assumption.
What makes this work:
When you show up inside a source your ideal client already trusts, you get introduced by that source. You’re not cold or interrupting. You’re being presented by someone they’ve already decided is worth paying attention to.
That changes the dynamic completely. A mention in the right newsletter will do more than a hundred LinkedIn posts on a platform your audience technically uses but rarely engages with.
Questions to ask yourself:
- If I guest on this podcast, will the listeners look like my best clients?
- If I sponsor this newsletter, will the subscribers recognize the problems I solve?
- If I contribute to this community, will the members see me as a peer or an outsider?
You’re looking for fit, not just reach. Smaller and targeted almost always beats large and generic.
Step 3: Look for the gaps your competitors aren’t filling
Most of your competitors have done exactly the same amount of audience research as you have.
Which is to say, very little.
They’re all showing up in the same obvious places. The top trade publications. The major conferences. The most-followed LinkedIn accounts. The platforms conventional wisdom says your audience is on.
When you take the time to actually map where your audience pays attention, you almost always find places your competitors have completely overlooked.
Niche publications with smaller but more concentrated readerships. Podcasts with a loyal following in your exact target market. Regional or specialty newsletters your ideal clients trust and forward to colleagues. Communities where your audience is active and almost nobody from your category is present.
How to find the gaps:
Once you have your attention map, do a quick check: are any of your competitors present in these sources? Guest appearances, sponsorships, mentions, advertising?
In my experience, the smaller and more niche the source, the less likely your competitors are there. That’s usually where the best opportunities are hiding.
👎 Bad example: Targeting the top five industry publications because they have the biggest reach.
👍 Good example: Finding the regional association newsletter your specific audience actually reads — the one where a well-placed article gets forwarded among colleagues because it’s so relevant and so rare for anyone to show up there.
Reach matters less than fit. A mention in a trusted niche source, read by 2,000 people who all look like your ideal client, is worth more than an ad in a publication with 200,000 subscribers who don’t.
Common questions about audience research
“Audience research sounds like a lot of work. Is it worth it?”
The research itself is not as time-intensive as it sounds. If you work with five to ten clients, you probably have enough signal to build a solid attention map in a few hours of conversation and observation. And knowing where your marketing will actually land is worth far more than the effort.
“What if my clients mention different sources? There’s no overlap.”
That’s useful information too. It might mean your target market is fragmented across many sources, which suggests different marketing channels than a highly concentrated market. It might also mean you need to talk to more clients, or get more specific about which clients you’re trying to replicate.
“My competitors are on LinkedIn. Shouldn’t I be there too?”
Being present where your audience is makes sense. Spending most of your marketing resources there because that’s what everyone else does, that’s a different question. Audience research helps you decide how much attention LinkedIn deserves relative to other channels your audience uses but your competitors are ignoring.
“What if I don’t have many existing clients to learn from?”
Look at your target clients instead. Their LinkedIn profiles, the industry publications they reference, the events they attend. Prospect research and sales conversations can reveal the same information as client conversations. You’re gathering the same data (where these people pay attention), just from a different pool.
“What do I do with this once I have the list?”
Pick two or three sources that have the best combination of fit and opportunity — meaning your ideal clients are there, and you can realistically show up in a meaningful way. Don’t try to be everywhere at once. Show up consistently in a few places where you know your audience pays attention, and expand from there.
A real example: What this looks like in practice
I ran this kind of audience research for a boutique consulting firm specializing in operational efficiency for mid-size manufacturers. They were posting regularly on LinkedIn, writing a quarterly newsletter, and sponsoring a well-known industry trade journal.
Results were underwhelming. Traffic, occasional leads, nothing that felt like traction.
When I started asking their clients and prospects where they actually got their information, a different picture emerged.
Three different clients mentioned the same regional manufacturing association newsletter. A publication with fewer than 3,000 subscribers. All three said they read it every month and forwarded it to their team regularly because it covered issues specific to manufacturers in their region.
Two clients mentioned a podcast hosted by a former plant manager who had built a following among operations leaders at mid-size manufacturers. The podcast wasn’t famous. Maybe 2,500 listeners at the time. But nearly every episode had listener questions that read like a wishlist for this consulting firm’s services.
Neither channel appeared on any list of “top manufacturing industry media.” Neither had meaningful competition from other consultants.
The firm pitched the podcast host with a specific episode topic tied to a question a listener had asked in a previous episode. They got booked. They contributed an article to the regional newsletter that addressed a specific regulatory change affecting their clients.
Those two placements generated more qualified conversations in three months than a year of LinkedIn posting.
The audience hadn’t changed. The targeting had.
The bottom line
Most boutique B2B firms know who their audience is.
Far fewer know where that audience actually pays attention. The specific newsletters they open, the podcasts they listen to, the experts they follow and trust.
That’s the difference between knowing your audience demographically and knowing your audience well enough to actually reach them.
The 40-40-20 rule has been around for decades because it describes something true about how marketing works. Your offer and your targeting account for 80% of your results. Most firms are optimizing the 20%.
If you’re spending more time refining your copy than researching where your clients actually pay attention, you have the leverage backwards.
Here’s what to do next:
In your next client conversation, ask: “What newsletters do you actually read? What podcasts do you listen to? Who do you follow on LinkedIn that you find genuinely useful?”
Then ask again with the next client. And the next.
Build your list. Look for the overlap. Then show up in those places instead of the ones you assumed they were paying attention to.
That’s where your marketing starts working harder.
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