Do You Know Your Brand’s Audience?

You’ve got an amazing idea and you’re setting up a new brand, but do you know who your audience is? If you don’t know who you are wanting to sell to, then how are you meant to know how to market your brand?

Consumer research is key to finding more about your potential consumer. You will probably have a rough idea of who you want to sell your product or service to, but research will be able to confirm whether they’re interested or not, and how they normally interact with brands on a regular basis.

Primary research is going to be the most beneficial method of research, this simply means that you will be conducting the research first hand rather than using a source that already has been collated. Secondary research can be great for wider insights, but it’s not going to be as specific to what you may be looking for and you also need to be careful that it’s from a reliable source.

Here are a few methods you can be using to find out more about your audience.

Interviews & Focus Groups

Hosting interviews and focus groups are a great way to find consumer insights. I find that interviews are better for personable questions when you’re focusing on just finding information purely about that person.

However, if I want to have more of an in-depth discussion, I find that focus groups are better to conduct as people become more open and relaxed. People also tend to bounce off each others comments and are encouraged to think of things they may not have before. During focus groups, you can be asking questions about brand experiences they have enjoyed in the past, what they would like to see from brands and more. You aren’t just limited to questions, you can get them to test out experiences and see what they think or watch how they interact.

Surveys & Feedback

Posting surveys and asking for feedback can bring you quick results, but keep the questions to multiple choice as people tend to be very vague in any questions they may have to start typing out.

With surveys, you can be asking general questions about the person; what do they enjoy doing? What’s their age or occupation? You can also add questions about whether they enjoy shopping in a certain way or even questions about the products and services you’re offering. Once you’ve pulled some data, you should be able to see what type of people will actually want to use your product or service.

Feedback is something you should be asking for once you’re already offering out your service and products. Your consumer won’t always stay the same, as trends may make their buying habits or daily life errands change. The types of things you can be asking are; where did you find us? what device did you use to shop with us? These types of questions are going to help you with finding out where your consumer is finding you and whether they’re enjoying their experience with your brand or not.

Create Personas

A persona is simply a profile of your consumer, almost like making a Facebook profile by including their details and interests. We make these to help you visualize what your consumer is like, what they do and essentially pick out ways that would be best to market to them.

When it comes to creating a persona, you can either use a real person that you have interviewed, or you could even make up your ideal customer.

You should only spend a few minutes on each persona, but you want to be making at least 5 to create some variety.

Here’s a list of information you could include;

• Give them a name
• What’s their age?
• What’s their gender?
• What do they do for a living?
• What are their hobbies?
• Where do they shop?
• What do they read?
• What do they do at the weekend?
• What do they like to eat or drink?
• What tech do they use?

Alongside these questions, I will sometimes create a mood board to make the persona come to life! If you’ve interviewed someone, you could even take a photo of them in their personal space or get them to write a day in the life to go alongside it.

Overall, once you’ve conducted some of these research methods and have created your personas, you should understand your consumer and how they interact with brands, what they do on a daily basis and even the basics things like what age group or demographic they sit in. This type of information means you can alter you advert audiences, styles and placements to target to them.