Knowing your audience should be a no-brainer as it defines how you’ll communicate company branding to your target market.
Others are stumped from the get-go though because they want to be all things to all people. That isn’t only highly impractical but it’s also absolutely illogical. Your target market is a group of individuals with their own opinions and preferences. They’re not just a demographic.
How you’re going to be effective at fixing your particular brand in your target market’s minds will depend largely on what is on their minds…and how you’ll connect using what fills their minds.
Your Audience’s Persona is Key to Unique Company Branding
The savviest of marketers seem to have no trouble communicating with their target market. They know exactly what to say or do to get their target market to “buy”—and how to keep them buying.
The secret? They create a living, breathing person—an individual with personality traits and quirks—from cold statistics and demographics. Once they’ve locked into this “audience of one”, they craft a marketing message that speaks only to her.
This marketing message, in turn, defines how they’ll reach her—the channels they’ll use, the materials they’ll disseminate, and the value add-ons they’ll create.
Questions to Ask About Your Audience
Getting to know your audience is much like chatting up a customer who comes into your store. You talk to the customer because you really want to know what makes her tick. That way, you can serve her better the next time.
So you ask questions like:
- What’s her name? How old is she?
- How would you describe her appearance?
- Where does she live? Does she live alone or with friends, parents, or a partner?
- Does she work? Where? How much does she make? What does she do after work?
- How does she spend her leisure time? With whom? Where?
- Who does she hang out with? What do they talk about? How do they talk with each other, the language they use?
- What are her life’s goals? Has she achieved most, or some?
- What hurts her? Her problems? Her pleasures?
How can you ease her pain or deepen her pleasure?
Obviously, these are just some of the questions that you can ask. Pose more questions to dig deeper, until you have a lock on your audience’s personality.
The most important though is to create a single persona—your “audience of one”—so you can get to know her more intimately. That intimate knowledge will help you create a tight, laser-focused message.
Company Branding For Your Audience of One
Branding—whether it’s for a company or a product—creates a particular awareness about you in your prospect’s mind. If you know your audience well, you can define how best to reach her, create a place in her mind, and make sure you stay in her thoughts (and in her budget!) for a long time to come.
Say your representative audience is Megan—a 35-year-old working mom with 3 kids all below the age of 12; a working husband who comes home late due to work demands; and a mortgage that’s creating a huge dent in her family’s monthly cash flow.
Based on that brief profile, you can define the many ways you’ll reach her:
- Business website. The “look and feel” of your website (including colors, fonts and navigation), the voice and tone of your site language, and the information you’ll present to her.
- Email copy. The same consideration in creating a website goes to writing email, but this time, you also need to how to get her to opt-in, how to write copy that makes her “buy” and so on.
- Mobile telephone. Will you engage her through free or paid apps, alerts, and special discounts?
- Tri-media (print, television, radio). Does she favor these channels more than the others?
- Brick and mortar store. Or would it be more effective to chat her up in a real-world setting rather than a company website, a phone app, or a TV ad?
Obviously, when designing your business websites, a young mother would probably be attracted to a soft, feminine branding than say, a teenager whose attention is piqued more by vibrant colors and energetic designs.
There are many aspects of company branding that your representative persona will dictate, from your company logos, product design and business websites to the channels you’ll be using to engage your target market. By sitting down now and taking the time to know your “audience of one” you’re better able to obtain increased response to your marketing and advertising efforts.