Primary and Secondary Audience Model
Serve the beneficiary by selling to the buyer who has access and budget
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 99%
The Primary and Secondary Audience Model separates whom you want to help from whom you must sell to. Define the primary audience as the people whose outcome matters most. Then test whether they have sufficient access, authority, and income to buy the solution directly. If not, identify a secondary audience that controls the relevant budget or access and benefits from improving the primary audience's outcome. Build the commercial offer for that buyer while preserving the intended benefit for the primary group. The model creates a sustainable exchange without abandoning the mission: the secondary audience pays because the solution advances its goals, and the primary audience receives the help. The key control is alignment; an intermediary is useful only when serving it still serves the beneficiary.
Origin
Bosché wanted to help millennials but found that they lacked access and income. She made millennials her primary audience and their employers her secondary audience, selling generational consulting to major organizations.
Core principles
- 01The person you want to help may not be the person who pays
- 02Access and purchasing power determine the viable buyer
- 03A secondary audience can fund impact for the primary audience
How to run it
- 1
Name the beneficiary
Define the primary audience whose situation you most want to improve.
Watch out Do not confuse personal affinity with purchasing power.
- 2
Test direct viability
Assess whether that audience has the money, authority, and access required to buy from you directly.
- 3
Find the economic buyer
Identify the employer, institution, or other stakeholder that benefits from solving the primary audience's problem and can fund it.
Pro tip Look for an organization already paying the cost of the unsolved problem.
- 4
Align the offer
Package the solution around the buyer's goals while ensuring delivery improves the beneficiary's outcome.
Watch out Reject arrangements where the buyer's incentives undermine the primary audience.
In the wild
Bosché could not efficiently sell expertise to millennials themselves, so she worked with employers such as Audi, Expedia, Comcast, and the US military that needed to recruit, retain, market to, and lead the next generation.
→ Organizations funded the work while millennials remained the group she intended to help.
Common mistakes
Selling only to the beneficiary
A valuable mission can remain commercially blocked when the beneficiary lacks access or income.
Letting the buyer replace the mission
Optimizing only for the secondary audience can erase the benefit promised to the primary audience.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for consultants and mission-led founders whose end users lack budget or direct access.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when the intermediary's incentives conflict with the welfare of the intended beneficiary.
From the transcript
“i teach people in our programs how to find your primary and your secondary audience”
“my primary audience was millennials but it did not take very long to realize millennials were not going to pay me for my expertise”
“that's when i identified my secondary audience which was their employers”
From the episode
Gabrielle Bosche: The Misunderstood Millennial
Gabrielle Bosche