Nearly 80% of Americans live in “urban areas.” To say that “it’s not the urban community that runs this country” is essentially calling worthless the opinions and contributions of more than 225 Million people.

Your own comments prove my point. Our politicians humiliate themselves to try to look like a “regular joe/jane” and garner a few more votes. Businesspeople and major corporations are located in “urban areas.” Even the standard-bearer for the idea of “Small Town America,” Wal-Mart, is headquartered in a city of over 20,000 people. Benton county, from which Wal-Mart draws most of its employees, is nearly 200,000. Politicians identify with the needs of the urban community not only because that’s where they’re from and live now, but because that’s where the majority of Americans are. That fact doesn’t make rural America any less important, but let’s not exaggerate the realities of the situation.

Americans crave the values in businesses that you outlined. We associate those values with “Small Town America,” so we assume that there must still be some magical place like that somewhere.

In reality, this fascination with rural America is solely a product of the media. Whenever media folks want to know what “regular Americans” think, they put an intern on a flight with a layover between New York and LA, take a cab to a town with a cute name (like Sheboygan), and point a camera at the first person in a John Deer hat they see.

If they really wanted to know what the “average American” thought about something, they need look no further than their newsroom for a white, 35 year old woman with at least a high school diploma who’s never served in the military and earns about $45,000/yr.

The truth is that life in “Small Town America” generally sucks. (I grew up in a small town. The total population of the town I was born in is smaller than the graduating classes of the high schools I live by now.) They’re nearly all single-industry dependent, and if that mill/factory/mine/military base closes, the town is screwed. Entire towns in North and Central Texas have just disappeared when the local outpost of some big-name corporation closed up and moved overseas or to somewhere with a higher concentration of skilled workers. Don’t even get me started on what life for an independent farmer is like these days.

You’re right. Millenials don’t get it. City dwellers generally don’t get it. Instead of wishing for life in a small town so they can live and interact with people with those values, they need to just start practicing “Small Town” values wherever they are.

Quit feeling guilty because you live in a city. You’re not alone; nearly 225 Million other Americans do, too.

If you are targeting people who are not just like you, you can alienate them if you fail to learn about them.

Good market segmentation results in a target market profile, or what some people call personas. They reveal the target market members attitudes, values, concerns, what media they us and their information needs.

I provide a video on a simple process to create a target market profile at the site linked with my name above.