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š§Ŗ Time to Resonance
Why alienating some people is your fastest path to growth
Isaac Peiris
April 22, 2025
Read time: 5 mins | Read online
I started my career in SaaS products and moved into the media industry. I was surprised to find there were way more similarities than youād thinkā¦
Iāve talked about them a little before on Linkedin, but I wanted to dive deeper into one particular concept thatās been on my mind for a while.
Hope you enjoy!
ā Isaac
P.S. over the next few weeks Iām running 3 free content strategy calls. If you want a quick sanity check on your content strategy, book in time here before the spots fill up.
Quick Hits
How podcasts are deepening brand connections [AdWeek]
TikTok launches Footnotes, its version of Xās Community Notes [Search Engine Journal]
Adobeās perfect TikTok [Linkedin]
Zuckerberg admits time spent on Facebook and Instagram has declined [Social Media Today]
India is launching a USD$1B fund to boost its creator economy [Entrepreneur]
Time to Resonance
My career began in product management, where we obsessed over a metric called "Time to Value" (TTV). It's the gap between when someone signs up for your product and when they experience its core benefit. The shorter the gap, the higher your retention.
It's why you see in-product walkthroughs and templates in nearly every SaaS platform. They're not just helpful onboarding features, they're strategic investments in reducing TTV.
When I moved from product to media, I noticed something fascinating. In both worlds, the first few moments matter most. In product, itās how quickly someone sees the benefit after signing up. In content, it's about how quickly someone feels 'this is for me', what I now call 'Time to Resonance' (TTR).
The Moment of Relevance
TTR isn't about hooks or clickbait. It's about what happens in the critical seconds after you've captured initial attention. When the audience is engaged but still figuring out if your content is specifically for them.
This is the moment where most content fails.
Not because it lacks quality or insight. Because it tries to speak to everyone and ends up resonating with no one. The audience has to invest time and effort in determining if it's actually meant for them. The result is high bounce rates, low engagement, and wasted marketing spend.
There are a few common patterns I've noticed in content that achieves fast resonance:
Identity markers: Content that features people who look, sound, and act like the target audience creates instant recognition.
Language patterns: Using industry-specific terminology, generation-specific references, or community inside jokes creates immediate relevance for those 'in the know.'
Specific pain points: Directly naming challenges that are unique to your target audience signals relevance faster than discussing general benefits.
Value framing: Presenting value in terms that matter specifically to your audience rather than in universal terms.
Cultural context: References, aesthetic choices, and value signals that align with your target audience's cultural preferences.
It might seem counterintuitive, but the fastest path to resonance often comes from deliberate exclusion. By signalling clearly who your content is for (and by extension who it's not for), you drastically shrink the TTR.
This explains a bigger trend, where challenger brands are successfully competing against established incumbents by deliberately narrowing their audience focus.
tbh skincare has grown from a small startup to a multi-million dollar brand in just a few years, despite skincare being one of the most competitive and saturated markets in the world. After one of their videos (that had nothing to do with their products at all) went massively viral, co-founder Rachael Wilde explained: āA lot of people said, āI didn't even know about your brand. And now I'm obsessed with you. And now I want to try your products.āā This immediate connection isn't accidental. āBrand, for us, is like the core mission. It's what centres the company and drives our decision making, essentially across everything we doā. Their approach isn't to create broadly appealing content about their product benefits or ingredients. Instead, they feature their team of young women, mostly doing things completely unrelated to their products. |
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This approach immediately signals to their target demographic "This is created by people like you, for people like you". Young women instantly recognise that the content is specifically for them. Not for everyone, but precisely for them.
The resonance is immediate. There's no wading through generic content to figure it out. The audience knows within seconds that they've found a brand that represents and understands them.
Importantly, other demographics quickly recognise the content isn't for them and move on, which is exactly what tbh wants. By not appealing to everyone they create faster, deeper resonance with the specific audience they care about.
The Power of Specificity
I've seen this play out first-hand. There are a bunch of meme accounts on social media with millions and millions of followers, but they struggle to deliver meaningful sponsorship value because their audience is so broad and only loosely connected. Then there are niche creators with just a few thousand followers who can charge premium rates for sponsorships because their audience is highly specific and engaged. |  |
The broad account may have 100x the followers (sometimes even more), but their impact is diluted by long TTR. The smaller, focused account creates immediate resonance with a specific audience, meaning deeper engagement and ultimately more value for both the creator and their sponsors.
That insight applies to non-creator businesses too. The longer the TTR, the lower value your audience are. This works across any industry:
B2B Services: A consulting firm that immediately signals it serves healthcare CFOs specifically will connect faster than one claiming to help 'all businesses grow'.
E-commerce: Product descriptions that start with specific use cases ('Perfect for busy parents who cook in batches') create faster resonance than generic benefit statements.
SaaS: Onboarding flows that immediately demonstrate solutions to industry-specific problems dramatically increase adoption rates.
My favourite example is Homepros, a newsletter specifically for HVAC contractors. Thatās niche!
TTR's impact shows up most clearly in engagement metrics. Not just likes, but the depth and quality of the engagement.
When content achieves resonance quickly, the audience relationship isn't transactional. Comments become more substantive. Brand advocacy happens organically. Customer loyalty gets stronger. Rather than just consuming the content, people form communities around it.
Content with longer TTR might still get amazing views or clicks, but the audience relationship is shallow. There's consumption without connection. Attention without affinity.
The data backs this up. Content that clearly signals its intended audience within the first 5 seconds sees higher completion rates and more shares. The audience doesn't just passively consume, they actively engage.
The Strategic Foundation of Resonance
This understanding of TTR connects directly to fundamental marketing principles like positioning and segmentation.
Brand positioning isn't just about carving out market space, it's the critical first step in creating resonance. A precisely positioned brand creates the foundation for all content to achieve faster TTR by establishing clear boundaries. Too many brands position themselves in terms of what they do rather than who they do it for. This creates an unnecessary TTR lag as audiences have to determine whether the brand's solutions apply to their specific situation. |  An example of positioning and segmentation which helps inform content strategy to reduce TTR |
Segmentation becomes just as important when understanding the distinct characteristics of different audience segments. That enables brands to create content that signals relevance more quickly to each group, even if that means creating multiple content channels.
There's a marketing myth that broader appeal = bigger audience = better results. Through the lens of TTR, it's obvious why that doesn't work.
When you try to resonate with everyone, you create content that nobody immediately recognises as specifically for them. The result is that everyone has to spend longer determining relevance, increasing TTR across all segments.
Even the basic maths works out. It's better to achieve instant resonance with 20% of your potential audience than to have longer TTR for 100%. The depth of connection with that 20% will drive substantially more business value than shallow engagement with a larger group.
The most effective content will lead with these rather than building to them, creating almost immediate resonance with the target audience.
This applies to every type of content, whether it's marketing campaigns, product design, or educational materials.
For founders and marketers, the takeaway is that reducing TTR through deliberate audience focus isn't just a tactic, it's a strategic imperative in a world of infinite content and finite attention.
My transition from product management to content marketing helped me see this connection between product growth and audience engagement. The faster you signal specific relevance, the deeper the ultimate connection.
Next time you create content, think about how quickly it signals "this is specifically for you" to your target audience. Even if that means clearly telling others it's not for them.
Because today, trying to resonate with everyone means connecting deeply with no one. The brands that win aren't the ones with the broadest appeal, but those with the shortest Time to Resonance for the audiences that matter most to their growth.
If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: brandchemistry.co/p/time-to-resonance
 | Let me know what you think about TTR by replying to this email. I read and respond to every one! Until next week, |