‘Focus’ is a very non-intuitive concept in marketing.

The confusion starts when you learn that focus requires you to narrow your customer base to something less than “everyone.”

As musician, you will ask, “Why will having a smaller target audience lead to more sales? I want to sell to the whole world.”

By focusing on your SuperFans and narrowing your target fan base, you get higher quality fans because you can form a connection with the group. When ‘everyone’ is your target market, the differences between the group are too varied to make any real progress.

You can recognize this phenomenon by thinking about your hometown. Think about your city and the names of 3 neighboring cities. Then, think about the various areas within your city. Clearly there is a Downtown area, South area, North, West, and East. There are also specific names that are given to areas within the town- something like the Hill, the River, or the Flats.

For each town and area, there will be very significant differences between them. The people will be different, the houses will be different, the schools will be different, and the activities will be different. The areas within your town are examples of focus. They are categories within categories. Consider your ‘city’ as the broad category, and the areas within the city as a focused area.

For a musician, how do you know if your category is too broad?

There are some research steps you can go through to examine online behavior and data. Here’s a rule of thumb. If you are describing your music as it would fit inside a music store bin, then you are too broad.

Rap, Jazz, Metal, Rock, and Country are all too broad. They work as an overall way for communication, but for marketing, it is way too broad. Pick a group that has focus and you’ll get more SuperFans.