Stephen Houraghan here at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video i want to talk to you about
your target audience and specifically how your target audience actually shapes the development
of your entire branding and marketing strategies now understanding your target market and target
audience is pretty straightforward i mean you have a brand and a solution of some kind in the form of
a product or service and you have an audience who are in most need of that product or service and
in order to get your brand in front of them as a brand of choice you need to understand what they
want what they need and how they're feeling in order to be able to deliver the right message at
the right time but going a little bit further than that and when we start to dissect what the brand
is made up of and the brand strategy elements involved then we can start to really uncover
the layers of complexity linked to the importance of the target market so think for example about
building a house right so if you wanted to build a house and you wanted to have a beautiful skylight
in your attic well you wouldn't start with the skylight before you can build a skylight you
need an attic before you have an attic you need an upstairs before you have the upstairs you have the
downstairs you have the walls and before all of that you have the foundations and that's exactly
what building a brand is like you need to start at the foundations and build your brand step by
step and at the very foundations of any brand is your target audience you really need to get
down into who they are the challenges that they have how they're feeling about those challenges
and really try to understand them so that your brand can resonate with them now from this point
everything within your brand is built from this foundation so if you don't get that
foundation right from the get go if you don't really dig into who your audience is and the
problems that they have the challenges they face and really understand everything about them then
every element you build on top of that will not be aligned to who your audience really is your
brand positioning strategy will be misaligned because it's not talking to the pain points of
your audience your brand personality will be misaligned because it's based on a positioning
strategy that is not aligned to your audience your brand identity system your communication
strategy your story everything will be misaligned because the brand building starts with who your
audience is so because those foundations are so important let's start with the definition
of that foundation so we're on the same page so a target audience is a specific group of people
most likely to want or need what your brand offers so who are these people where are they going where
are they coming from what have they been through to get to where they are at this point where they
need and want your solution and what are their goals what are they trying to ultimately achieve
and what emotions are tied to that now sometimes brands and businesses are created by a visionary
or a leader who has been through a certain problem or challenge before and has overcome that problem
and looked back on it and said you know that problem needs to be addressed in a better way
and the business is born now this isn't always the case but if it is then that leader and that
visionary is at an advantageous position because they can tap into the journey that they went on
the feelings they had the emotional connections that they had both before and after the solution
so they can see both sides of the coin so it's really an advantageous position to be able to
tap into the understanding of that audience on a deep level so whether that's you building your own
brand or the brand leader that you're building the brand on behalf of you need to try and tap into
that emotion to that journey that they've been on if that's the case now audience personas are the
way to develop your audience and really bring your audience to life from a tangible point of view
you know once you understand the details of that audience persona and those journeys that they've
been on and those emotional connections then you can really start to develop a communication
strategy around that now there are often more than one audience personas for any given brand because
different people experience problems in different ways now each one of these personas represents a
different segment of your overall target audience but the more you understand each and every one of
these segments and each and every one of these audience personas and the more you develop them
out on a detailed and emotional level the more you're going to be able to resonate with them
through direct communication speaking to their specific journey their specific challenge and
their specific pain points now if you've heard of the terms audience persona or buyer persona
before then you've probably heard of the terms demographics and psychographics now while you
will go out and find articles out there that will tell you demographics and psychographics are the
tools that you need to define who your audience is really once you've categorized who your audience
is using demographics and psychographics you're really only then at the starting point
demographics allow you to categorize your audience based on the circumstances of their lives so
what kind of job do they have are they married what kind of income are they on do they have
kids where do they live on the other hand your psychographics are about their behaviors so
this really starts to paint in a little bit of the picture in terms of their personality so
what kind of car do they drive what do they like to do on weekends what activities do they like
to do what magazines do they read what music do they listen to so your demographics allow
you to categorize your audience based on their circumstances whereas your psychographics allow
you to categorize your audience based on their behaviors but as i said this is still really only
the starting point we don't know too much about them at this stage yes we know where they live we
know that they're married they have kids we know what kind of car they drive we know what music
they listen to but as far as understanding who they are as people and what they're kind of going
through in the journey that they're on we don't know too much about them at this stage and that's
what we need to uncover when defining who our target audience is who these audience personas are
in order to really resonate with them in order to develop a communication strategy that's
going to talk to those specific pain points so what we want to do is we want to uncover
where they will meet our brand at what point they're going to meet the need or the want for the
solution that our brand offers when we're able to understand everything about that situation where
they've come from up until that point what they've been going through are they stressful are they
full of anxiety are you know do they have a really strong desire for a certain type of outcome when
we start to understand all of these uh emotional connections that they have to the problem that
our brand solves then we can really start to understand how we're gonna communicate
with them how we're gonna resonate with them on a human level now once we've identified the
pain points that our audience has the next step is about uncovering the emotional connections
that they have attached to those pain points and this is the key here this is the key to resonating
with your audience is through that emotion now any challenge that we have in our lives any
kind of problem that we come across we're going to have both an internal and an external conflict
with that challenge so what does that mean well let me give you an example so let's say there's a
business owner who needs to meet his sales targets and he's falling short of those sales targets well
his external conflict here is that if he continues to miss his sales targets then
there's going to be implications for that he might only be able to last six or so months and
then he might lose his business but what is the internal conflict that he's carrying with that
emotional connection well the internal conflict is about how he's feeling about those consequences
so he might have a family that he's supporting he might have kids that he wants to send to college
and if he doesn't meet these sales targets and he does lose his business then that's gonna impact
all of those plans so his external conflict are the immediate consequences his internal conflict
are the eventual and long-term and emotional consequences so how do you go about getting all
of this information well if you have a budget you can go out and you can pay a market research firm
and they'll be able to give you a huge amount of information based on really detailed analysis but
chances are you're not going to have tens of thousands to throw at defining who your audience
is so in that case you're going to need to go into the marketplace you're going to need to roll
your sleeves up and do some hard work and use just basic marketing tactics guerrilla tactics and just
become a detective become a brand detective become a detective on who your audience is where they go
find out where they're hanging out where they're contributing and start looking at what they're
doing start analyzing their behavior what are they sharing what are they liking what are they
commenting on how are they feeling about circumstances in and around the solution
that you offer are they asking any questions what kind of questions are they asking now
they're not going to be posting comments saying their their internal and their external struggles
they're not going to be sharing that kind of information out there but you're not relying on
them sharing that level of detail either what you want to do is you want to build a picture
of their circumstances and this starts with your demographics and your psychographics
it then narrows down into the pain points that they have and you will find clues in various
different forums on various different review sites about how this group of people are feeling about
the problem that you solve and then it's about reverse engineering that uncovering those feelings
uncovering that emotional connection and then that internal and external conflict but remember this
is the foundation that you're building your brand on the more you understand about your audience the
more detail that you have about their intricate lives about the journeys that they've been on
and those internal and external conflicts the more you're going to be able to build
a positioning strategy that will talk to that uh personality that will talk to them a visual
identity everything that you build on top of your rock solid foundation is going to be a lot more
solid because you've done the work in identifying and understanding who your audience is but what
about you what is your experience as a brand builder whether it's building a brand for yourself
building a brand for a client do you know who your audience is are you crystal clear on the
pain points they have the emotional connections they have the internal and external conflicts and
are you able to build a communication strategy around those conflicts do you know it that well
what about your processes is there anything that you use to define who your audience is
or are you having challenges finding out who your audience is finding where they go and
where they leave comments and putting that whole picture together i'd love to know let
me know in the comments if you found this video helpful if you found any kind of insights at all
please let me know as well give it a thumbs up hit that subscribe button hit the notification
bell it'll let you know when i've got new videos coming out and i will see you in the next one