If you have yet to intimately define your ideal customer, one of the first things you need to do is to get inside the minds and lives of those you aim to serve. Knowing your ideal customer, target audience, or customer persona is the foundation upon which all marketing is built. Intimately knowing who you’re marketing to will help steer every decision you make in your business to suit your target audience.
Imagining the age, gender, location, and other such demographic details is a solid start to defining your ideal audience that many business owners have a general idea of from the conception of their offering. In this article, we will be focusing on the psychographic details of your audience and how you can serve them best through your branding, marketing, and product features.
Psychographics are the psychological and cognitive attributes of a shopper that reveal their core beliefs, values, and goals. When used effectively, psychographics combined with demographics to understand an audience and cater to their habits and needs.
Here are some questions to ask yourself to learn more about your audience’s psychographic qualities:
1 | Where do they spend their time?
Consider their location both online and offline. Ask yourself which social media sites they might tend to use and what areas they hang out in. Is your customer a luxury shopper, or might they love to thrift? Do they go on hikes, are they a homebody, or do they spend weekends out at brunch and in museums with friends? Knowing precisely where your ideal customer spends their time shapes everything from where you market to what phrases and vernacular to use.
2 | Where do they seek information?
This one is essential for research. Do they Google everything, peruse Pinterest, or lose hours to YouTube? Not only does this tell you where you can position your own answers, but it also gives you a strong idea of the questions, frustrations, and type of language they are likely to use. This will tell you how they think, the voices that influence them, and how to craft a standout voice of your own.
3 | What are their frustrations?
What problem do they need you to solve for them? Knowing their biggest frustrations will also teach you what emotional chords you need to be strumming in your message. In behavioural economics, emotionality often distracts from rationality, so appeal to the emotion, then back it with data. Or, more commonly, list benefits first, then features. Understanding these pain points will dictate how you position your solution, what stories you tell, and what testimonies you collect and display.
4 | What are their hopes and desires?
What makes them happy? Communicate how your offering will contribute to a brighter future for your consumers and help them live out their best aspirational life.
5 | What are they afraid of?
Fear is a stronger motivator than pleasure. If you can figure out what keeps your customer up at night, you can advertise how your offering is a solution to that worry. Use this appropriately and watch your conversion rates increase. However, to warn, don’t overuse fear. Never focus solely on the negative. Use their fears in how you position your solution— how you deliver them from that fear.
Defining your target audience well lets everything else fall perfectly into place: your website, socials, content, ads, and more. Everything should be built on the cornerstone that is your audience persona. If you would like us to walk you through the next steps in strategizing and visualizing your brand identity, shop our Essential Guide to Visual Branding.
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