Now, Next, Not Yet and Never

Most audience plans sort people into two piles: the ones we target and the ones we don't. That's too crude to plan growth with. We use four.

Now audiences already love what you do. The product fits them. The job is to turn fans into advocates, because people who recommend you bring the next lot in.

Next audiences like you but haven't committed. That's where most near-term growth sits, and they usually need something new from you: a product, a price, a partnership, a reason to come back. This is where innovation earns its keep.

Not Yet audiences barely engage today, but not because they can't. The timing, the product or the price is wrong for now. Don't spend on them yet. Watch them, so you know when that changes.

Never audiences are the people you realistically won't win, because they're hard to reach or what you offer doesn't fit their needs. Naming them is the useful part. It stops the budget leaking towards people who were never going to respond.

The case for four boxes rather than two is balance. Lean only on your Now audience and you shrink with it. Chase everyone equally and you can't afford to do any of it well. Four boxes give a team names for the trade-off, so they can argue about where the next pound goes.

The labels also move, and that's the part people miss. A segment isn't Next for ever. It's Next until the evidence says otherwise.

David learnt this at EMI. Around 2010 the label was about to release Tinie Tempah's first album and believed he'd be a household name. The early research was more careful: at the start, only one segment really connected with the music. So rather than spend everything chasing the mainstream on day one, the launch was built in stages. The team measured the audience every three months and widened the marketing only as receptiveness grew. Each group was a potential Next audience, not yet a Now one, until the songs were out and the data said otherwise. The singles were Pass Out and Written in the Stars.

Two things made it work. The labels were tied to evidence, not hope. And they were reviewed on a fixed rhythm, so a segment was promoted when it had earned it and not before.

What to do on Monday

• Put every segment in your current segmentation into one of the four boxes. If everything lands in Now or Never, you don't have a growth plan.
• For each Next segment, write down the one thing that would move it to Now: a product, a price, a partner or a message.
• For each Not Yet segment, write down what you'd need to see before it deserves money, and check for it every quarter.
• Name your Never audiences out loud, and stop paying to reach them.

Now+Next is built on this framework: Now+Next

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