We all live inside circles. Think of it like a solar system of friends: some people are core, orbiting close to the centre of the group, while others sit further out on the periphery. And here’s the interesting part: we’re never in just one circle. We’re often on the edge of several others at the same time, moving in and out depending on the day, the setting, or the people around us.
But not everyone we meet in these groups fits. Sometimes you’re introduced to someone, you spend time in the same circle, and it’s obvious, you just don’t click. No friction, no drama, just… nothing. So what’s missing?
The Spark That Makes People Click
I think it comes down to a common point. Every relationship, at its root, needs one to even get started.
Talk to a stranger about the weather, and you’ve got somewhere to go. Say the word “fish” out of nowhere, and you’ve got nothing: no shared ground, no way in. The common point is the door. Without it, there’s no room to walk into.
Once that first point of connection is there, something interesting happens: you start finding more. One shared interest leads to another. Before long, those common points stack up and start to form the foundation of an actual relationship. Enough of these relationships together, and you’ve got a circle, a group of like-minded people who understand each other almost by default.
And it goes deeper than just topics of conversation. It shapes behaviour and language too. What’s completely normal in one circle, a joke, a tone, a level of bluntness, might land badly in another. We instinctively adjust. The version of you at the pub with old friends isn’t quite the version of you at a work dinner, and that’s not fake, it’s just fluent social calibration.
You can see the same thing at work in long-term relationships. A marriage isn’t built on one common point, it’s built on dozens of them, stacked up over years: shared values, in-jokes, routines, the way you argue and make up, the things you both find funny that nobody else does. Each one is small on its own, but together they form something that’s genuinely hard for an outsider to break into. That’s really the end point of what starts as a single common point with a stranger: given enough time and enough shared ground, it can grow into the deepest circle of all.
What This Means for Marketing
This idea maps almost perfectly onto how we build relationships with clients and customers.
With a client, the first common point is the introduction, and it’s rarely something as light as the weather. It’s usually their pain point, the problem they’re actively trying to solve. That’s the door in. From there, the job is the same as making a friend: find more common ground, build trust, layer on more points of connection over time. But just like in social circles, appropriateness matters. What works with one client, a certain tone, a level of directness, a bit of humour, might completely miss with another. Reading the room is still the skill, even in a business context.
With a customer, you often don’t get the luxury of building slowly. A single common point may be all you have: one advert, one line, one moment of attention. Which means it has to be the right one. There’s no room to find your way there gradually; you have to know, going in, exactly what will resonate.
Finding the Right Circles for Marketing
If the common point is the door in, then the obvious question is: how do you find the right circle to knock on in the first place?
The honest answer is that you have to think, act and understand like the person you’re targeting. Not guess at it from the outside, but properly step into their world.
That starts with working out where they actually hang out, and not just physically. Yes, the local pub, the gym, the coffee shop all matter, but today most circles live online too. Are they on LinkedIn or TikTok? Are they in a niche forum, a WhatsApp group, a Facebook community for parents or hobbyists? The circle isn’t one place any more, it’s often several overlapping ones, and each has its own norms.
From there, it’s about understanding what they actually like. What content stops them scrolling? What problems do they complain about? What do they share, save or comment on? This is the equivalent of learning the shared interests that bond a friendship group, except now you’re doing it deliberately, as research.
And then there’s language, which might be the most overlooked part. Every circle has its own tone, its own shorthand, its own version of “appropriate”. A message that lands perfectly in one community can feel completely tone-deaf in another, even if the underlying offer is identical. Formal versus casual, technical versus plain-speaking, cheeky versus serious: getting this wrong doesn’t just fail to connect, it can actively mark you out as an outsider who doesn’t belong in the circle at all.
Done well, this is really just empathy with a method behind it. You’re not manufacturing a fake common point, you’re doing the work to genuinely find a real one, in the place your audience already is, using the language they already use.
The Takeaway
Relationships, personal or commercial, start the same way: with one point of connection that opens the door. Everything after that is about finding more of those points, and knowing which ones are appropriate for which circle. Marketing isn’t really so different from making a new friend. You just have far less time to find out if you click.
