Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you be more concrete? This all sounds good on an abstract level, but that's where it stops. 1) What approach did you take to "truly understand" your target segment (there are 100s of them) 2) How were you able to reach them to "very little cost" due to "really understanding them"? I really like the abstract idea of "understanding your target segment so well that you're able to detect where they are", but seen no…
You may be over complicating things. Or maybe I'm oversimplifying. For us, it's pretty simple to talk about our product because we're helping improve sleep. It's such a common problem in today's society, and the existing "solutions", focus on comfort, other physiological changes (cool pads, weighted blankets), ear plugs, eye masks, etc etc. We're using neuro-feedback to alter your sleep state. It's pretty magical. If…
You've mentioned asking people about their sleep, what they do about it, what did they try.
Have you tried something like:
a) Asking: What are the last 10 places on the web (related to improving your sleep) that you visited?
Another way to formulate the question:
"What sleep-related sites/communities/etc. did you visit over the past 10 days?"
b) This is just my idea, but wanted to hear your opinion: Give them a gamified experience (top 100 resources on the web for improving your sleep), but before they see each "section" (1 section=1 acquisition channel, like a FB group, subreddit, etc), they need to shortly type the answer to "What [section] (related to sleep) have you visited?". Can be a simple quiz-like experience using a input box.
Curious to hear your thoughts.