Friday, March 08, 2019

Morning Brew’s secret to success – focus on a single target persona


While marketers generally try and break down their target demographic into multiple personas, some successful startups have gained major traction following the opposite strategy. Morning brew the popular newsletter company recently hit 1 million subscribers. According to its founders Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief one of the major reasons for this success is their focus on one persona. 

The demographic they decided to go after was the one they best understood because this persona was a lot like themselves. The newsletter is designed for young business professionals. It’s also delivered in a very convenient and consumable way that a busy urban professional would like. An email is sent out to subscribers each morning. It contains a few short briefs on the most important business news of the day and a small section with lifestyle content. It provides a quick update on latest business and tech news.

The advantage of this focus on a single persona is the resulting content which is extremely relatable.  The strong brand that Morning Brew has built is largely based on word of mouth due to their great content. In April 2018, three years after its launch at the University of Michigan, it had 180,000 subscribers. By November, that number had shot up to more than 700,000. A plan to launch a new line of specialized industry focused newsletters is being crafted to expand on their success so far. Knowing their audience intimately and strong focus on producing relatable content rather than pursuing multiple distinct personas has turned out to be a winning strategy for startups like Morning Brew.

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