Rounded down to nothing

Take any success you can name and divide it by everyone it could have reached. The answer is almost always a number so small it rounds to nothing.

A brand that sells a great many packs a year is a big brand. It is also missing nearly every household in the country. A voice with a large following online is ignored by almost everyone using the same feed. Even the things that feel like they are everywhere are, by the arithmetic, nowhere.

This is not bad news. It may be the most freeing number in marketing.

If even the winners reach close to nobody, then reaching everybody was never the job. The job is the few. The people who already lean towards what you make, who will notice it, use it, and mention it to the next person.

The trouble starts when a small brand plans as though it needs the whole country. It writes for everyone, prices for everyone, puts its packs anywhere a pack can go. It sands off every edge in case someone, somewhere, might be put off. And the few who would have loved it can no longer find anything to love.

Aiming at everyone is usually the very thing that keeps a brand from mattering to anyone.

So aim small, on purpose, and stop apologising for the size of the number. Almost nobody is plenty, if they are the right almost nobody.