You may not be your audience
I’ve just had a conversation with a friend who works for a well-known retail business. She told me that they’ve decided to rebrand again after only two years. Apparently somebody very high up has started in the business and has said the brand doesn’t resonate with him.
He’s not their customer.
He can’t relate because the product isn’t for people like him. It’s very clear to me that this is the case but it seems to be a common issue. It’s something I’ve experienced in businesses I’ve worked for, where owners or CEO’s don’t seem to see that their business purpose isn’t actually for them.
No one business can appeal to everybody. Some have a wider audience range than others but if you try to talk to all people of all ages, you’re not going to personally connect with anybody I’m afraid.
So what needs to happen to avoid instances like this?
Commission customer data.
If you don’t really know who your customer is then you need to find out. Getting feedback from those who have bought from you (and even from those who haven’t to understand why) is a starting point.
If you’re targeting a particular age group, gender or interest group get some research about them. Find out as much as possible: what drives them, their values, their goals in life. This will build up a picture of what they want from the businesses or brands they associate with and what drives them to buy. There are customer research agencies who specialise in doing this and Hubspot have a great article on making a start on this.
Understand what’s going on in the world.
This may sound a little airey fairy but understanding trends is incredibly important. They give us insight into how people’s mindsets are changing based on cultural, political and economic events. It builds up a picture of our customers overall world and can often pinpoint other areas a business can help them with.
For example, Amazon make people’s lives easier by selling anything their customer might need with easy online ordering and delivery but they are developing a wearable that can read our emotions because they have seen the trend towards monitoring our health and wellness. I’m sure it will also suggest products that might help us if we’re feeling stressed or angry and enable them to know even more about us!
Employ people who are knowledgeable and different.
Steve Jobs said “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so that they can tell us what to do.” You may have staff in the business who are your target market so learn from them. Get them involved in the business and understand what they want from a product or service like yours.
When I worked at Mamas & Papas I, alongside many of my colleagues, were the company’s future target market and we were heavily involved in shaping the brand so that it was relevant to expectant parents of the future.
Audit your brand and marketing communications.
Once you’ve built up a picture of who your real customer is, it’s time to see if the business is really communicating in the right way to them. The way to understand this is to analyse everything the business conveys from the visuals, to the content, even down to whether you are using all of your marketing channels in the correct way? Often in a branding process it’s the communication that is the problem rather than the identity itself.
If your business has been through a re-brand process, your customers have been considered and the brand has been developed around these customers, then that’s the first half of the branding process done successfully. The second half is carrying it through all future communications so your audience continues to resonate with the brand, which is where the business my friend works for may indeed be falling down. Getting your brand right doesn’t stop at the logo and colours.
Having a plan is important for on-going brand marketing in order to keep on the right track and to make sure you keep being relevant to your audience. Your audience may not be you but that doesn’t mean your business isn’t going to be successful, you just need to get to know them!
If you want to get to grips with understanding your audience better, book a virtual brew and we can chat about the best approach for you.