If you’re new to my writing, you’ll notice that I use the phrase “hungry people” a lot. You probably want to know why: did I miss breakfast or something? Actually, “hungry people” is my phrase that I use instead of “target audience.” Here’s why.
You are not a target
At its worst, “target” implies something that you shoot, in a William Tell sort of way. If your weapon hits the target, you and your son don’t die. If your weapon misses low, you kill your son. Is that what we marketers do? Hopefully not.
An audience is a group of people that sit in chairs while you perform your song and dance in front of them. (“These are the seven questions your content creator should ask you. Thank you for coming to my BRED talk.”)
Sometimes the audience just sits. Not good.
Sometimes the audience claps. A little better.
If you’re the Beatles or Cheap Trick, the audience screams. But still not enough.
Clapping or screaming is nice, but this doesn’t count as true engagement. I mean, in a way it would be nice if you scream with joy at this post, but it counts for nothing if you don’t actually buy Bredemarket’s marketing and writing services.
You are hungry people
So I resolved not to use the term “target audience.” After considering “needy people,” I finally settled on “hungry people” as a temporary phrase. I figured that unlike “needy people,” “hungry people” are more inspired to act on their needs. They don’t just clap or scream; they are motivated to search for something to eat.
2 1/2 years later, I haven’t thought of anything better.
And if you need my help to address your hungry people, book a free meeting with Bredemarket.
I prefer the term “hungry people” to the term “target audience” because it conveys the idea of those who really really want your product.
The buffet.
And therefore it stands to reason that you want to write content for your hungry people.
For example, if you’re selling automated fingerprint identification systems to cops, your content should probably talk about protecting residents by identifying bad people and keeping them off the street.
“When you spend your time scanning your environment, adapting to those around you, and adjusting your communication style accordingly, you can start to lose yourself, lose sight of your message, and become forgettable.”
Let’s face it. If everyone mirrors their target audience, and they have the same target audience, how can you tell them apart?
I hope that Scott Swann and Ajay Amlani forgive me, but I’m going to use them as examples.
Years ago Ajay, Scott, and I were associated with IDEMIA and/or MorphoTrak, but we have each gone our separate ways.
Ajay Amlani is now at Aware, a U.S.-based biometric company that sells to multiple audiences, including law enforcement.
Scott Swann is now at ROC (formerly Rank One Computing), a U.S.-based biometric company that sells to multiple audiences, including law enforcement.
Aware and ROC could simply mirror the needs and desires of U.S. law enforcement and mirror them back. But if they did that, Aware and ROC would appear identical and interchangeable.
And they’re not.
Aware has been around for several decades and offers everything from components and tools to full-blown automated biometric identification systems. Amlani, a new arrival, has a background that extends back to the FIRST version of CLEAR, along with multiple roles within the federal government and the private sector (including the aforementioned IDEMIA, where we did early work on venue identity verification solutions).
ROC is a newer arrival with a laser focus on several biometric modalities. Swann joined ROC after a long career at the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal government entities, followed by time in the private sector with MorphoTrak (where we worked on Morpho Video Investigator together, a potential solution for Boston Marathon bombing events) and IDEMIA National Security Solutions.
What is Sterne’s advice for Amlani, Swann, and others who don’t want to simply reflect their prospects? Here is what Sterne does:
“I write about what I’m interested in, and while I do write for all of you (and hope you get some value from what I share), I mostly write for myself, to explore ideas. In other words, I forget about the room when I write….
“When you write for yourself without considering a person or group of people, you end up writing more personally and often more universally.
“The irony is that by writing for yourself, you usually create something that others can connect to more deeply….
“And the more you write from this place, the clearer you get on your voice, priorities, and overarching ideas, the better able you are to create something that resonates.”
Personally, my hope is that my infusion of myself in my writing helps me to stand out and to better communicate what Bredemarket can provide to identity/biometric firms.
Some of you may not remember the neutron bomb…and some of you do.
Since 1945, the common depiction of nuclear devastation was of catastrophic damage to people and buildings within a large area.
But then the concept of the neutron bomb was developed. Britannica explains:
“A neutron bomb is actually a small thermonuclear bomb in which a few kilograms of plutonium or uranium, ignited by a conventional explosive, would serve as a fission “trigger” to ignite a fusion explosion….
“Its blast and heat effects would be confined to an area of only a few hundred metres in radius, but within a somewhat larger radius of 1,000–2,000 metres the fusion reaction would…be extremely destructive to living tissue….”
As the popular press summarized it, neutron bombs, unlike older uranium or hydrogen bombs, would spare the buildings and kill the people.
What was missed was that the neutron bomb will kill fewer people in a smaller area.
The benefit of the neutron bomb?
The limited damage area promoted a theory in which neutron bombs could be used on the battlefield to target a limited group of enemy troops. This limited range would theoretically confine the damage to military targets without damaging “a whole civilization.”
But this benefit is also a detriment, as Britannica notes.
“However, other military strategists warned that fielding a “clean” nuclear weapon might only lower the threshold for entering into a full-scale nuclear exchange…”
And of course some opponents objected to the very idea of killing ANY people while leaving the buildings intact. Capitalist values at the forefront?
If you’ve never heard of the neutron bomb, they pretty much disappeared after the end of the Cold War.
Which is odd when you think about it, because the end of the Cold War made countries more likely to conduct small-scale wars against each other. From a military tactical perspective (ignoring the strategic or moral issues), neutron bombs seem perfect for such exchanges.
“A purple squirrel is a candidate so rare and perfectly matched to what you need that finding one feels impossible. Someone who checks every single box, including boxes you didn’t even know you cared about.”
Then Welsh provided an example of a purple squirrel, a man named Sagar Patel who worked for him at PatientPop.
On paper pyramids
At the time PatientPop had less than $40,000 in annual revenue, so it didn’t have a huge marketing department. It didn’t even have Bredemarket as a product marketing consultant because Bredemarket didn’t exist yet. And anyway, at the time I knew next to nothing about PatientPop’s healthcare-centered hungry people, physicians who needed to attract prospects and clients via then-current search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
Google Gemini.
Patel could have launched into a complex, feature-laden SEO discussion, but his target physicians would have responded, “So what?” Doctors want to doctor, not obsess over choosing trailing keywords…and understand the benefits of a solution immediately.
“So Sagar grabbed some notebook paper and drew five sides of a pyramid. He labeled each one, describing his ‘5 sides of local SEO for healthcare providers,’ and then taped them all together.
“He made himself a little paper pyramid to use in his sales pitches.”
Google Gemini. My prompt asked Nano Banana to create a “realistic” picture.
Was Patel’s paper pyramid an effective sales tool for PatientPop? Read Welsh’s article to find out.
What’s your paper pyramid?
Too many companies wait months for the perfect marketing solution instead of doing something NOW and refining it later.
Bredemarket’s different. I ask, then I act.
I ask, then I act.
Once I’ve set my compass, I get my clients a draft within days. Last week alone I turned out drafts for two clients, moving them forward so the content is available to their prospects and clients.
With my suggested schedule for short content—three day drafts, three day reviews, three day redrafts—your new content can become your online “secret salesperson” within two weeks or less.
Don’t believe me? This post alone is chock-full of links to other Bredemarket posts and Bredemarket pages, all of which are functioning as “secret salespeople” for me every single day.
If you want secret salespeople to work for you, talk to me and we’ll devise a plan to improve your product marketing awareness RIGHT NOW.
As I’ve said before, there may be many different stakeholders for a particular purchase opportunity.
For the purpose of this post I’m going to dramatically simplify the process by saying there are only two stakeholders for any RFP and any proposal responding to said RFP: “business” people, and “technical” people.
Google Gemini.
The business people are concerned about the why of the purchase. What pressing need is prompting the business (or government agency) to purchase the product or service? Do the alternatives meet the business need?
The technical people are concerned about the how of the purchase. Knowing the need, can the alternatives actually do what they say they can do?
Returning to my oft-repeated example of an automated biometric identification system purchase by the city of Ontario, California, let’s look at what the business and technical people want:
The business people want compliance with purchasing regulations, and superior performance that keeps citizens off the mayor’s back. (As of January 2026, still Paul Leon.)
The technical people want accurate processing of biometric evidence, proper interfaces to other ABIS systems, implementation of privacy protections, FBI certifications, iBeta or other conformance statements, and all sorts of other…um…minutiae.
So both parties are reading your proposal or other document, looking for these points.
So who is your “target audience” for your proposal?
Both of them.
Whether you’re writing a proposal or a data sheet, make sure that your document addresses the needs of both parties, and that both parties can easily find the information they’re seeking.
If I may take the liberty of stereotyping business and technical users, and if the document in question is a single sheet with printing on front and back, one suggestion is to put the business benefits on the front of the document with pretty pictures that resonate with the readers, and the technical benefits on the back of the document where engineers are accustomed to read the fine print specs.
Google Gemini. It took multiple tries to get generative AI to spell “innovate” correctly.
Or something.
But if both business and technical subject matter experts are involved in the purchase decision, cater to both. You wouldn’t want to write a document solely for the techies when the true decision maker is a person who doesn’t know NFIQ from OFIQ.
Long-time Bredemarket fans may recall when Bredemarket established and publicized annual goals. I haven’t publicized my overall goals since 2022, but I am publicizing these two tactical goals for 2026 to (1) hold myself accountable, and to (2) enlist your help. Both are awareness goals, designed to bring Bredemarket to the attention of the identity, biometric, and technology marketing leaders who are my hungry people.
Tactical Goal 1
In calendar year 2026, achieve 100 WordPress views (as measured by “Most Viewed,” not “Most Downloaded”) for each of the three “essentials” videos:
You can help me realize my goals by doing one or both of the following (I ask, then YOU act):
If you have not seen all three of these videos yourself, visit either the Bredemarket blog post or the YouTube playlist and view the ones you haven’t seen. No need to view the ones you’ve already seen; I’m interested in meaningful views, not statistical inflation.
Share the videos with identity, biometric, and technology marketing leaders who can use Bredemarket’s services.
For me, 100 or 1,000 annual views of a video is a stretch goal. Even looking at lifetime statistics, my most popular WordPress video, my discovery of the Amazon Fresh Upland opening, has less than 100 views, and my most popular YouTube short, the metal strips that protect palm trees from squirrels, has less than 3,100 views. (I believe my most popular video ever was my Instagram reel of the San Antonio Avenue bridge: over 6,800 views.)
Are you a technology marketing leader who lies awake at night worrying about the following?
“Keeping up with the speed and complexity of the digital landscape.”
Well, maybe not that exact phrase. That sounds like something generative AI would write.
And in fact, my buddy Bredebot wrote it when answering a question about Chief Marketing Officer pain points relative to content.
Bredebot is the one in the middle.
But I’m not going to let Bredebot write an entire post about it, because I’m going to write it myself.
The human way to reflect the sentiment above is to ask whether your content is up-to-date, or is as dated as a Pentium.
And that’s something that a marketing leader DOES worry about, because they (usually) want their firms to be perceived as innovative, not old fashioned.
Let me give you an example of outdated content that persists today.
SEO, AEO, GEO…I believe they’re different
For years we have been discussing search engine optimization, or SEO. The whole point of SEO is to ensure that your content appears at the top of results when you use Google or Bing or another search engine to launch a search. (Ignore “sponsored content” for a minute here.)
In case you haven’t noticed, fewer and fewer people are using search engines. Instead, they are searching for answers from their favorite generative AI tool, and now the new term the kids are using is answer engine optimization, or AEO. Or perhaps you can follow the lead of Go Fish and refer to generative engine optimization, or GEO.
Now some people are continuing to use SEO when they mean AEO and GEO, under the theory that it’s all just optimization, and it’s all just searching but just with a different tool. Personally, I believe that continuing to refer to SEO is confusing because the term has always been associated with search engines.
“Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking for keywords, AEO concentrates on providing comprehensive, authoritative answers that AI systems can easily process and deliver to users….
“Think about how you use AI tools today. You don’t ask for ‘electrician Auckland residential services’, you ask, ‘What’s causing the flickering in my kitchen lights?’ or ‘How much should it cost to rewire a 1970s house?’ You want answers, not search results.”
But forget about XEO and let’s return to the content YOU create.
How do you keep YOUR content up-to-date?
Let’s say that you’ve reached the point in your content calendar where you have to write a blog post about pop music.
And let’s also say that you’re old enough to remember the 20th century.
You may have a problem.
For example, when you see the words “pop music,” you may immediately spell the second word with a “z” and a “k” when you TALK ABOUT.
And now that I’ve lost half my reading audience, you can see my point. While personas are approximations, you need to refer to them when crafting your content. If your hungry people (target audience) tend to be in their 20s and 30s, they’re probably not going to understand or respond to songs from M (Robin Scott) or Kraftwerk.
So how does a marketer ensure that their content is not dated? By remembering to ask, then act. Question your assumptions, do your research, write your content, then check your content.
Question your assumptions
Before you write your content, ensure your premise is correct. For example, I didn’t assume without questioning that “keeping up with the speed and complexity of the digital landscape” was a pressing issue. I KNEW that it was a pressing issue, because I encounter it daily.
Do your research
Next, take a moment and check what you are about to say. Was your assumption about fingerprint examiner infallibility affected by the NAS report? Was your assumption affected by activities that occurred after the NAS report?
Write your content
At some point you have to stop asking and start acting, writing your content. Write your draft 0.5 to get your thoughts down, then write your draft 1.0. And keep your personas in mind while you do it.
Check your content
Once it’s drafted, check it again. Have your dated assumptions crept into your writing? Did you use the term “SEO” out of habit, by mistake? Fix it.
The results of up-to-date content
If you do all these things, you’ll ensure that your competitors don’t laugh at your content and tell you how out of touch you are.
Ideally, you want your competitors to show how out of date they are.
“Look at WidgetCorp, who doesn’t even know how to spell! Their writer’s left finger slipped while typing, and they typed the so-called word ‘AEO’ rather than ‘SEO’! Everybody know the term is SEO!”
Which gives you the opportunity to write a succinct reply to your bozo competitor.
I’ll give you the joy of writing it yourself.
Unless you want Bredemarket to write it, or other content. Book a free meeting to discuss your needs. https://bredemarket.com/mark/
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