Does your brand speak to your target audience?
When you first set out to start your business it can be a natural thing to choose your brand colours and fonts based on what you like, after all its your business! But what if I were to tell you this could be stopping your ideal clients from coming to you?
One thing I work on with my clients, before anything else, is discovering who their target audience is. Some people find this part hard or believe to be a waste of time. In this post I go over exactly what a target audience is, and the value of knowing them and connecting with them.
What is a target audience?
A target audience is basically your ideal client, they are a specific group of people you want to communicate to who want or need your services. They could have some common characteristics like demographics or behavioural traits, but what really unites your audience is the problem they want to solve and the values they hold.
The more clearly you define your target market, the more chance you will have in reaching them, but you also need to know exactly who you’re talking to and how you communicate with them.
Why this is an important part of my brand strategy?
In order to create a successful brand strategy that attracts your target audience we need to know who your target audience is. How old are they? What do they like and dislike? What do they enjoy doing in their free time? What values do they have? This will all affect the outcome of your visual identity.
Building an emotional connection with your target audience is the key to making a successful brand. In order to build a meaningful and genuine connection with people, you need to know exactly who you’re talking to.
How can I find my target audience?
This part is mostly research based, and to get accurate information from your target audience you need to go directly to the source and not just guess.
If you are an established business you can collected this information from past clients via interviews and or surveys. If you are starting out or planning to niche into a new market look for past surveys, studies, and other relevant research that might give you similar insights.
A good thing to keep in mind at this point is you will need to know these following questions when putting your brand strategy together:
Why you first started your business?
Who are your services for?
What are their needs or wants?
How are their needs not being met?
What do I do with all this information?
Once you’ve collected your responses, you will need to collate and categorise the information. During this stage you will probably start to see common answers, and possibly discover responses you hadn’t thought of. These can then be used to create user personas.
To create a user profile, gather information about what is important to them, who they are and how they see themselves or their ideal self. Use this information to determine which product or service will best meet their needs and appeal most strongly to them based on their personal values.
With this information, you can create a brand that connects you with your target audience by applying the right strategy.
Conclusion
Understand your target audience
Your brand should make the target audience feel something.
Establish a brand that attracts the target market, so they will feel connected to you and eventually become loyal customers.
This is the very first step I take with clients who want to have a visual identity that aligns with their brand strategy and attracts their target audience.
Are you clear on who your target audience is? If you need some help in getting clarity on this book a consultation with me by clicking here.
