When I first started, I wanted to be all things to all people. But I quickly learned that speaking to everyone meant speaking to no one. Sound familiar?

In this episode, I share some target-audience insights from an unexpected place: the four Gospels in the Bible.

Whether you’re religious or not, stick with me.

The Gospels, while part of a global message, were written to a specific audience with language, stories, and details that resonated uniquely with that group.

It’s a powerful metaphor for how we should approach our messaging as business owners.

Clarity creates connection and traction.

So if you’ve ever said, “But my message is for everyone,” this episode is for you.

• Why trying to reach everyone can quietly stall your business growth
  • It sounds generous, but it may be the very thing keeping you stuck and unseen.
• A surprising metaphor from the four Gospels that simplifies audience clarity
  • One target audience. You’ll never look at your marketing the same way again.
• How to shift from “helping everyone” to making a real impact with one audience
  • It’s not about excluding, it’s about connecting in a way that finally gets traction.
• A simple shift that makes choosing a target audience feel freeing, not limiting
  • This reframe will help you let go of the guilt and own your lane with confidence.
• How to build momentum without changing your message, just your focus
  • You don’t need to start over. You just need to aim with intention.

• Clarity builds traction: When you know exactly who you’re speaking to, your message lands and moves people to act.
• A focused message doesn’t limit you: Serving one audience deeply creates the momentum and visibility you’ve been missing.
• Effective messaging isn’t about reaching more folks, but attracting the right ones: The deeper the connection, the greater the impact.
• How using AI tools like ChatGPT can help modify your message: Segmentation, without losing clarity.

“Even a timeless truth can be positioned differently for different hearts, for different audiences.”

“Your message structure should match the needs of your audience.”

“A clear, specific message begins to build trust because people can self identify, and they can resonate with what you are writing and what you’re saying, what you’re producing.”

“Meet your target audience where they are. Write the story that’s already in their head so that they can begin that journey with you.”

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Join now and lock in the $37/month founding rate before it increases.

Let’s turn complexity into simplicity—together.

 Visit Community.MarisaShadrick.com to learn more.

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Marisa Shadrick [00:00:00]:One audience, one transformation, one premise, one offer. This is one of the hardest things for solo business owners to wrap their arms around. It’s so difficult because we want our offers. We want our services to be for everyone, But it’s something we all have to understand very clearly if we want to grow our business. And I finally found a way that I think will help you understand why one is so powerful. I’m gonna show you what the Bible teaches about choosing one target audience. Stay tuned. Hello.

Marisa Shadrick [00:00:41]:Hello. And welcome to the Amplify Your Authority podcast. I’m your host, Marisa Shadrick, AI marketing strategist and certified copywriter. And today we’re gonna talk about target audience and also a little bit about segmenting. And this is an important topic. No matter what program you buy, no matter what course you buy, whether you’re growing a business or writing a book, it all comes down to that first question, who is your target audience? And the problem is many of us want to say it’s for everyone. But we’ve all heard the cliche, when you speak to everyone, you speak to no one. There’s a lot of truth in that and I have tried in past episodes and in articles to explain target audience.

Marisa Shadrick [00:01:24]:Now it wasn’t until recently when I was listening to a sermon that all of a sudden out of the blue, I finally knew how I can communicate target audience to my audience. See, the Bible, whether you believe in it or not, is for everyone. However, the gospels, there are four letters in the New Testament that are written by different authors and they are very different for different audiences even though the Bible’s for everyone. So I titled this what the Bible teaches about choosing a target audience. Now again, this is a a metaphor. It’s not anything alike. These are two separate things, the Bible and marketing. But I wanna illustrate something to you because we often say that the message in the bible is for everyone.

Marisa Shadrick [00:02:08]:It’s for everyone. Jesus is one of the the primary people that believed in inclusion more than anybody else. And so the Bible shows us that even a timeless truth can be positioned differently for different hearts, for different audiences. And so your work deserves the same type of clarity. So here’s where I’m going to unpack this. The Bible is a universal message, but each of the four gospels was strategically written for a distinct audience with specific culture, historical, and theological background and needs. So the audiences were different in these four gospels in the New Testament. A single audience, a single transformation, and a single offer.

Marisa Shadrick [00:02:54]:The offer in all four cases is the same, but the way they’re presenting it is different. So let’s take a quick look at one of the gospels, Matthew. Matthew was specifically written for the Jewish community. Jewish believers and seekers, especially those familiar with Hebrew scriptures. It was written in a way that they would understand based on their culture, their background, their history, their religion. It emphasized Jesus as the Messiah. You couldn’t talk to a another group like the Greeks or the Romans that way because they wouldn’t understand Messiah. But in the gospel of Matthew, you could.

Marisa Shadrick [00:03:34]:And that that Jesus as the Messiah was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. So it’s the way it was written. I don’t wanna distract from this isn’t a a podcast about religion. It’s about target audience. So frequently, it references Jewish law. In this particular book, it references Jewish customs and prophetic texts, which is what we know as the Old Testament. It includes detailed genealogies tracing Jesus to Abraham and David. It uses phrases like the kingdom of heaven instead of the kingdom of God to respect Jewish tradition.

Marisa Shadrick [00:04:10]:Matthew is seeking to prove that Jesus Christ is king and the son of David. So in this particular book, in the book of Matthew, it is written for the Jewish community. So in the book of Mark, it wasn’t written to the Jewish community. It was written to the Gentiles, specifically the Romans. So there were many believers in Rome possibly going through persecution, so it was written differently. It didn’t have the genealogy that was included in the first book in Matthew. It was a little different. It was very action oriented.

Marisa Shadrick [00:04:42]:If you know anything about Roman culture, they were very advanced. They had advanced military. This was very action oriented and records achievements such as the miracles. So it recorded this because it knew that this community, this type of group, this target audience would resonate with that. It betrayed the personality of Jesus so that when trials came, they could remain faithful. It explained Jewish customs. It didn’t assume that they knew. It explained some of them, and it explained some of the phrases assuming that the reader wasn’t familiar with these terms.

Marisa Shadrick [00:05:19]:It portrays Jesus as a suffering servant, aligning with Roman ideal of heroic endurance. So it was totally written different. Now the overall message, yeah, the Bible’s for everyone, but you can see how each gospel was strategically written for a different audience. Now when we look at the book of Luke, it was also written to the Gentiles. These are the non Jews, but not to the Romans. It was written to the Greeks. So for the Greeks, it was a very simple and clear approach and highlighted Jesus as the compassionate son of man, a universal savior for all people. It included parables and stories not found in some of the other gospels.

Marisa Shadrick [00:06:03]:And in this particular gospel, it paid special attention to those that at that time were undeserving, like women and children and the outcasts. There was a lot of social justice themes in this particular book, and it presents a detailed and orderly account, Probably because Luke was a physician and probably because he was probably Greek as well. So he knew how to write to this audience. He was a companion of Paul, so he was able to give an account of Jesus’ life in a clear way, in a succinct way, but it was very different. So we see so far that Matthew was written for the Jews. Mark was written for the Romans. Luke was written for the Greek. And then we look at the book of John, which was written for a broader audience for those that were spiritually seeking.

Marisa Shadrick [00:06:54]:And oftentimes it’s used in various denominations as the training manual for Christianity. Kinda gives you an overview, a playbook, so to speak, of what the Christian faith is all about. So the audience is mixed. It has both Jews and Gentiles, and it has less narrative. It’s more theological with an emphasis of Jesus’ divinity as well. It contains, like, a lot of symbolic language, like light and dark, life and death. And this particular book could be summarized with verse thirty and thirty one. It says here, the disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs in addition to the ones recorded in this book.

Marisa Shadrick [00:07:35]:But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him, you will have life by the power of his name. So you can see that each one of these gospels, even though the Bible is for everyone, when it came to the gospels, it was very specific about the audience, who they were writing to. And the authors were very, very conscious about making sure that the content in the gospels would resonate with their audience. So here are three takeaways. Even though the Bible is for everyone, the gospel was written for a specific audience, and we need to do the same thing. We need to identify who our audience is. It’s one of the things I had to do as I started writing my book. The first question was, who is your audience? And we all wanna say it’s for everyone, but we have to dial it in and be super clear who that audience is.

Marisa Shadrick [00:08:31]:Tip number two. Your message structure should match the needs of your audience. So each audience and say you have a group that wants the transformation that you offer, but they’re in a different stage. Maybe they’re beginners and then you have others who are advanced. You might want to segment those groups and begin segmentation so that you can write content that would resonate with a person in a beginning stage and then write content for people that are in a more advanced stage. Now you can see how that will double up on your work. Right? So we wanna make sure that we start with one audience, and as we survey, as we ask questions, as we interact, we can see where everybody’s at, and we can see if there’s a need to begin to segment the group. But then we wanna be very careful how we communicate with them because it’s gonna be different.

Marisa Shadrick [00:09:26]:We can’t just copy and paste the same content for one and give it to the other. We have to modify it, and ChatGPT is a great way to do that. The third takeaway is that a clear, specific message begins to build trust because people can self identify, and they can resonate with what you are writing and what you’re saying, what you’re producing. They can resonate with that, and that drives engagement. Each gospel offered a specific message. So the message was in Matthew that Jesus was the promised king. The message for Mark was that Jesus is a powerful servant leader. The message in Luke was that Jesus brings healing and inclusion.

Marisa Shadrick [00:10:07]:The message in John was that Jesus is divine and deeply personal. But you see, that doesn’t take away from the overall transformation, the overall goal, why the Bible was even put together. It’s just segmenting and bringing people in from different cultures in a way that they understand, and then taking them from there on a journey so they can know more. This is really key because you might see what they need, but they’re not ready to hear it. They’re not ready to experience that yet or even buy it yet because there’s something else on their mind. So meet them where they are. Write the copy of the story that’s already in their head so that they can begin that journey with you, and that will help. You can always take them to the next step later, but people resonate with specific message.

Marisa Shadrick [00:11:02]:So I hope this helped you to understand target audience a little better. Again, I use the Bible as a metaphor because I thought it was a perfect example of the Bible being for everyone, yet the gospels were written for different audiences. So that you can understand that it didn’t dilute the final message, the final takeaway, but each one of those gospels had a specific transformation or a specific goal. And we can do the same thing. We can begin to really dial in with our target audience and then expand from there need be. But just know it’s gonna be a little bit more work as you start adding segments. So if you enjoyed this podcast, podcast I would really appreciate it. And if you wanna learn more about target audience, how to use AI marketing, I do have a private membership.

Marisa Shadrick [00:12:02]:That’s only $35, and I provide a lot. It’s not just go in and you just kinda navigate on your own. You can, but the bonus of it is that I present everything live, and I also provide custom GPTs for lead generation. And so you have, right out of the box, custom GPTs you can use to ideate your lead magnet, to create your opt in, your thank you page, your email sequences, your quizzes, so many things that you need for lead generation. But we do a lot of live calls, but you can always just consume the content as it’s released inside the platform. If you’d like to know more about it, you can go to https://marisashadrick.com/community. So until next time, take care.