Knowing Your Audience Is Key To Great Branding + Marketing

Knowing your audience is so essential to having a successful business that it’s important to spend time continuing to improve your knowledge of who they are, what they like, what they need, and how best communicate with them.


Whether you wing it and assume to know your audience or actually spend time doing your research and forming genuine relationships with the people you’re serving, knowing your audience is that make-or-break factor for your brand.


Benefits of Identifying & Knowing Your Audience

Here’s a quick list of why your energy is well-spent in digging into your ideal customer’s persona to help your business.


1 - You’ll be able to make better decisions about everything in your business: from brand strategy, messaging, marketing campaigns, product and service development, pricing, and more.


2 - When you know your customers, you won’t waste time and money creating products and services they won’t buy.  Start with knowing your customers and build everything around their desires and needs. 


3 - When you know precisely who you’re talking to, and exactly what they’re dealing with, it’s easier to craft messaging and marketing efforts to position your brand (and offers!) to resonate.


Now you know why it’s vital to know your target audience and ideal customers, let’s talk about where to focus to really get to know them better.


4 Areas To Breakdown The Details About Your Audience


DEMOGRAPHICS

You’ve probably heard about the demographics of an audience.  I call these the outward descriptors to identify your best fit clients.


It’s things like:

  • Gender

  • Education

  • Location

  • Marital Status

  • Salary


But, that’s only the beginning - and it only gives you information.

What every brand really needs to understand from their target audience are…psychographics. 


PSYCHOGRAPHICS

Your audience’s psychographics are the inspiration you’re looking to leverage in all your core message, marketing and communication from your brand.  I call these the inward motivators that reveal the heart of your best fit clients.


It’s things like:

  • Big audacious goals

  • Their values

  • Wildest dreams

  • Mindset obstacles that throw up roadblocks

  • Challenges and frustrations (i.e. their biggest pain points you can help solve)


Knowing these things can help you tailor your messaging, make it more specific, relevant and resonant so they not only notice your brand, but buy from you again and again.

BEHAVIORS

Consumer behavior is all about where your potential customers are spending their time.  Understanding their buying habits, but also their consumption habits will help you save time and money to reach them.


If you know your audience spends hours pinning their favorite recipes on Pinterest and is turned off by Facebook, then you will know where to focus your marketing efforts to be more effective. 


INTERESTS

Knowing what your audience is into is a big deal.  Their interests are both your competition and your inside sneak peek into what resonates with them most.


If you know they are obsessed with Taylor Swift, can’t get enough of the newest Romantasy book series, love their book club, are super into health and wellness and love to travel to coastal locations…


…well, now you have so much juicy inside information on things to reference to relate to them even more specifically (and they’ll love you for it!).


A Couple Ways To Do Your Audience Research

Before we go, here are 2 exercises to help you get to know your audience better so you can create more effective strategies, messaging and marketing to grab their attention and attract them to your offers.


COLLECT PSYCHOGRAPHIC DATA ON YOUR AUDIENCE

If you’re a Service Provider, you most likely have some kind of application or intake form potential clients fill out to alert you they need your help.

Here are 2 must-have questions for your application:

> What do you feel is your biggest [SERVICE YOU OFFER] challenge right now?

> What is your ideal outcome in working on [SERVICE YOU OFFER]?


For example, on my application to work with me 1:1  to develop your brand strategy, I ask:

What do you feel is your biggest branding challenge for your business right now?

What is your ideal outcome in working to develop your brand strategy?


If you’re an Online Educator, and don’t have an application process…

It’s time to get your survey on.  Create a simple survey, provide an incentive to take it, and use the same questions from above, filled in with what you do.


RESEARCH YOUR EXISTING AUDIENCE

One of the best ways to determine who your target audience is to look at who already buys your product or service.  

If you’ve been in business for awhile and you need to refine your target audience and get specific about who you’re serving, simply take a look at who your offers have been appealing to most up until now.

Find the commonalities among your existing audience to begin to identify who they are and how you can really begin to customize their experience with your brand.  

Are they all women?  Moms? Are they into personal development?  Maybe they’re all spiritual? Take a look, and figure it out.  Use that new information to refine and elevate your brand strategy, messaging, offers and marketing.


In Summary

Remember, your brand is only as effective in direct proportion to how well you know your audience and can speak their language.

To maximize your brand’s strategy, messaging, resonance, marketing and advertising efforts, ensure you know your audience so you can tailor your products, services and communication to their preferences and needs.


Need additional help identifying and getting to know your brand’s target audience?  Hit me up in the DMs over on INSTAGRAM and let’s chat about your brand!


BRANDING, BUSINESSHilary Hartlingtarget audience, brand strategy, branding tips, identify your ideal clientComment