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Cover of The UK Guide to Identifying Your Target Customer: Work Out Who Actually Buys, and Prove It Before You Spend Anything

The UK Guide to Identifying Your Target Customer: Work Out Who Actually Buys, and Prove It Before You Spend Anything

Most small businesses do not have a marketing problem. They have a target-customer problem, and they have disguised it as one by spending money. This guide opens with the fact nobody wants to say out loud — in the first half of 2026 more UK businesses closed than opened, and closures took £3.3bn more turnover out of the economy than new start-ups put in — then gives you the method that fixes it in thirty days on one sheet of paper, with no research budget and nothing to buy. Nine chapters, six named frameworks: the Target-Less Test, the 7-rung Evidence Ladder, the Four Roles, the Five Dimensions, the Harvest, the Fit Score, the Channel Ledger and the Honest Arithmetic. You will find out how solid your current picture really is, why the blocker in a deal is the person nobody researches, which five segmentation dimensions actually change what you do on a Tuesday, how to mine your own inbox and reviews for the words customers really use, how to choose one segment and commit to it, what the UK rules now permit you to send — including the PECR fine that rose to the greater of £17.5m or 4% of worldwide turnover on 5 February 2026 — and whether the market is genuinely big enough at your prices. Ends with a day-by-day 30-day plan and a one-page Target Customer Canvas. Every figure was checked against its original source on the day of publication: ONS, the Information Commissioner's Office, the Competition and Markets Authority, Ofcom and legislation.gov.uk. Written for UK business owners, in plain English, by PracticaleBooks.com.

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What's inside

  • The Target-Less Test: five questions that reveal whether you have a business or a guess — and why 'we serve everyone' quietly costs you money for reach instead of relevance.
  • The 7-rung Evidence Ladder: assumption, anecdote, pattern, corroborated pattern, quantified, channel-verified, compounding. Almost everyone is lower than they think, and each rung unlocks a different kind of spend.
  • The Four Roles hiding inside 'customer' — user, buyer, payer and blocker — plus the two questions that map all four in three weeks, and why the blocker kills more good deals than price ever does.
  • The Five Dimensions that survive contact: situation, life stage, spend power, location and behaviour. The rule that cuts any demographic slice which cannot change your copy, price or stock.
  • The Harvest: five free sources of real customer research already sitting in your inbox, your reviews and your lost sales — and the four moves that turn them into segments you can write for.
  • The Fit Score: five criteria, twenty-five points, written down. Includes the rule for subtracting two points from the segment you most want to be true.
  • The Channel Ledger: six columns per channel, filled in before you spend. Plus the UK rules that changed in February 2026, when a PECR breach rose to a maximum fine of £17.5m or 4% of worldwide turnover.
  • PECR in plain English: consent or soft opt-in for email and text to individuals, why sole traders count as individuals, what the soft opt-in does not cover, and why a bought-in list should be deleted rather than sent to.
  • Reviews and paid content: why fake and concealed incentivised reviews are a banned practice, the positive duty to prevent and remove them, and how the Competition and Markets Authority has enforced it.
  • The Honest Arithmetic: count, discount, convert, multiply, compare with doing nothing — with the £90,000 VAT threshold as a yardstick for whether your segment can carry the business, and a reversal test that halves the forecast.
  • The 30-day plan, day by day, from the Target-Less Test on day one to a first test you can afford to lose on day 29 — with what each of the four possible results actually tells you.
  • A one-page Target Customer Canvas, a 20-term glossary and eight verified sources — the Office for National Statistics, the ICO, the CMA, Ofcom and legislation.gov.uk.

How you get it

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  • The download link is emailed to you the moment payment clears.
  • A PDF, readable on any phone, tablet or computer.