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29 Comments

Tell us who you think our target audience is in 5 seconds (and we’ll return the favor)

Hey everyone 👋 We just launched our LearnStash.com paid community and we want to make sure we’re using the right language to speak to the right people.

We’ll gladly return the favor!

Here are the rules:

  1. Visit our website LearnStash.com and do a quick 5-second scroll

  2. Comment 1-2 lines of who you think our target audience is (or should be) — include any demographics, psychographics, likes/dislikes you want

  3. Leave a link to your landing page or website so we can return the favor :)

Let’s play!!

  1. 2

    Hi Tyler,

    Your target audience consists of people who want to work on themselves, but might feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start. They might not even know what their goals are and they definitely lack a supportive environment.

    A few thoughts:

    1. The purpose circle seems like a nice addition, but it's hard to understand from the homepage what it is and what it does. There's a free video, but I need to sign up before I can use it
    2. The only paid community I've ever joined, I could try out for free
    3. The mini-courses section is what I found very clear. I understand what I'm getting before I sign up
    4. I am personally not a big fan of the extrinsic rewards, they don't motivate me at all
    5. There's a lot of content and terminology on the page, and it's a bit overwhelming

    We are working on https://sanderling.app, curious to see what you think!

    1. 3

      Great feedback! Very helpful. I see your point about the Purpose Circle. Would a scrolling GIF/video showcasing the tool be better in your mind? It’s essentially a growth plan with your goals & habits and the why behind it. Here’s mine: http://mypurposecircle.com/Tyler

      We’ve considered offering a free trial. Was the paid community you tried for free using that model?

      Here’s my feedback for your website. Excellent concept btw!

      1. Above the fold, there aren’t any keywords or images that give me any specifics of what type of learning I might get to do with the website. Because of that, nothing grabbed my attention to keep scrolling

      2. I was a little thrown off by the “get started” button taking me to a sign up page. I was expecting to be able to start exploring content. If the intention is lead capture it might be clearer if the copy on that page said “Sign up for free to continue” vs. “Login”

      3. The sample content feed were all videos so it might be nice to showcase different types of that’s what’s offered

      Hope that’s helpful!

  2. 1

    You have pictures of yourselves and you are men in 20s-30s I'd say that the target demo is the same? The testimonial is an entrepreneur so maybe that's a demographic too?

  3. 1
    • There is a lot going on, although it's clean, it's too much. I'm viewing on a desktop FWIW.
    1. Educated, perm WFH, FIRE, $100k+, will pay for quality, Yoga, Meditation, Audiophile, Craft Beers, Vegetarian, Patchouli
    2. https://www.indiehackers.com/post/5s-understanding-and-first-impressions-e54fded74a

    🙏

    1. 1

      Thanks for the feedback and target audience thoughts!

      For your landing page, it's a really interesting idea. My main thought is that it comes across a little aggressive and a bit demeaning. I may not be the target audience and also know that it could work to your advantage for who it is for :)

      1. 1

        @tspeeg
        Thank you! I've actually revamped the UI and tried to bring down the noise a bit. If you get a second 🙏
        https://beta.lifeboss.biz

  4. 1

    Hi Tyler,
    I think your target audience is:
    College graduates | People over 35 | mainly women. Who are either stay at home parents, transitioning between jobs or are looking for a career change.

    The design of the website is quite good as well! the information flows well. But it is a little too verbose. I am not sure if people are really going to be reading so much text.

    Here's my landing page - https://thursday.social

    1. 1

      Thanks for your feedback and thoughts!

      Your landing page looks really nice and copy is clear and concise. My only feedback is the CTA. It wasn't super clear what I would be getting when I clicked "Create Social" that also sounds like a little more work than something like "Start Your Social"

      1. 1

        Thanks so much for your feedback

  5. 1

    Being a lifelong learner myself, I think it'd be appropriate if you consider me a persona for your product. Hence, I'll try to share my "specs":

    -27 YO
    -2 high school degrees (Math sciences and
    -Software Engineering degree
    -3rd year studying economics and finance (still studying)
    -A bunch of certificates from Coursera and others
    -Content I watch the most: informative content (The infographics show, Veritasium, along with some good ones in Arabic)
    -Drive to learn: I ENJOY it. When I want to sleep, sometimes I play a finance course instead of Netflix (Coursflix and chill, if that's a thing)
    -Struggles: sometimes I run out of steam, especially when I'm taking a long course and I know nobody in it. I think the community part of your product solves this problem.

    I hope this is helpful.

    I would like to ask for a favour. I know it's not part of the deal, but I'm looking for my target audience too, without a landing page (just looking for beta testers now). My product is simple: Automate data extraction from Forms (PDFs, scanned and vectors). One use-case: a company I know is using a custom extractor (internal tool) to process some gov documents, it saves them literally Months of work. The same utility of their custom tool can be set up using our product in literally less than 5 minutes. I know my tool is good, I don't know who should I target. Any ideas, please?

    1. 1

      Thanks so much for sharing!

      I would say your target audience would be mature small businesses that might not be aware of a tool like yours that can save so much time on paperwork. I would start with what types of businesses you know does a lot of paperwork and then target those business owners.

      Hope that helps!

  6. 1

    Hi Tyler,

    Target audience: People who want to develop their own skills outside work.

    I will say this - the website seems quite crowded. The "Hear what... members have to say" - I think I'd move that more to the top.
    Pricing + FAQ - I think you can put them on separate pages.

    My site: https://cinematicstudio.app

    1. 1

      Thanks!

      I would say your target audience are 20-35 year old social media creators.

      It might be helpful to highlight what makes Cinematic Studio a better option than your competitors. Is it easier to use? Faster? Cheaper?

      1. 1

        Thanks! I wrote "Dead Simple. Dead Fast" Maybe I should make it more prominent?

        1. 1

          Yeah, that might could work as sub-head below the headline!

  7. 1

    People looking to grow in life & you will provide the handholding?

    1. 1

      That’s it! We’re willing to do whatever it takes to guarantee someone’s growth. Glad it was clear to you.

      Do you have a site I can review?

      1. 1

        Sure! I just launched the landing page, just testing it Logit

        1. 1

          I would say your target audience is anyone frustrated by traditional password management solutions.

          I would suggest a slight copy edit to this line :)

          "Login as simple as taking a selfie." vs. making a selfie

          1. 1

            Hey thanks for the input, I will definitely test it.

  8. 1

    My initial thoughts after looking for 5 seconds are that you are targeting people who are into personal development/self-help!

    1. 1

      Definitely! That's definitely the interests we're going after. Glad we passed the 5-second test :)

  9. 1

    It seems to me a more than interesting topic, I have noticed a lot of demand after the pandemic on this.

    I think the homepage is too long and with so much content that describes those 4 pillars of functionality that they provide, I am losing interest in staying tuned. Beyond that, let's go to your question:

    1. The public for me are people who seek to improve their habits and ways of carrying out their day to day in order to achieve long-term goals that generate a real impact in their lives.

    This is my current project: https://gorillacms.com (currently in Spanish but I would appreciate it if you can translate with Google Translate).

    Thank you and congratulations on LearnStash.

    1. 1

      Thanks for your feedback and thoughts on target audience!

      I took a look at your site and I had actually never heard of Headless Wordpress so I might not be the best person to give feedback :) Overall, I like that it was broken down into a few simple steps.

      What would be most helpful for me and build trust would be any case studies on how your solution improved performance on a site and the tangible results it created

  10. 1

    My comment is regarding mixing intrinsic and extrinsic motivation / rewards - this can put some people off. Lifelong learners are typically intrinsically motivated. I think there’s a reasonable chance that talking about “free stuff” and using gamification type tactics might backfire and turn those types of people away, as the signals you’re sending are somewhat mixed. That said, if your target audience is people who want to be LLL but really aren’t, you might do just fine as is… 🤷‍♂️

    Oh, and the branding of pricing tiers seems a little out of place, why are they called FounderXXX? This seems to be the only place founders are mentioned.

    HTH

    1. 1

      Thanks! That's helpful. I think we're still figuring out exactly who our target audience is. I would hope that we could speak to both but also don't want to alienate one or water down our message. Definitely given us something to think about.

      And good point about the Founder Pricing. We had been sending mostly warm email traffic to our page explaining the discounted Founder Member pricing but now that we're sharing publicly that deserves copy explaining the offer :)

      Thanks for taking the time!

  11. 1

    This comment was deleted 10 months ago.

    1. 1

      Oh no, we have an exit intent pop-up that must inadvertently triggered early. Thanks for mentioning!

      That’s a great point and the term “personal growth” being generic has been one of our struggles from the start. Our courses cover macro self improvement topics — specifically your perspective in life, your patterns, and your ability to persevere. We developed a 3-step plan and a tool on the landing page called the Purpose Circle that simplifies things to the 1 goal you want to accomplish, the 3-5 habits that help you hit that goal, and a perseverance statement that clarifies your “why” behind it.

      We’re essentially taking hugely popular books like Start With Why and Atomic Habits and providing a place for people to further discuss and hold each other accountable to living out the principles.

      As far as topics beyond the macro of self improvement, and getting into the micro like Finances, Marketing, Leadership, Time Management, etc. we would handle on a more 1:1 basis with our tool recommendations chat service by recommending they read a book by Ramit Sethi for Finances for example.

      Ultimately, all the information for self improvement is already out there — the problem is most of the time people don’t know where to go when they need it, don’t have the accountability, and often get overwhelmed so they don’t actually do anything. We’re trying to tackle a huge problem so trying to communicate effectively is proving to be really tough haha Your questions are helping us become more aware though so thank you for taking the time!

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 10 months ago.

        1. 1

          Very well done and super clear! I honestly can't say that I have any feedback. The only 2 things I think I could even mention is maybe highlighting the keywords "forms, polls, and live chats." As a non-coder and a very inexperienced no-coder, when I read "Save countless hours of web development" I immediately thought it wasn't for me. But then when I read "forms, polls, and live chats" I tuned back in because I've tried all types of those before but they were all different solutions. I may not be your target audience, but the idea of an all-in-one solution to forms, polls, and chats sounds really appealing :)

          1. 1

            This comment was deleted 10 months ago.

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