Step 1 in Defining a Winning Brand
Defining Your Target Market to Get Started!
Strong brands deliver value to the buyers. However, in order to deliver value, you must first be relevant. In order to create relevance, you must first make a connection. In order to create a connection, you must first identify your target market. Therefore, before you can begin to think about marketing or even before you build your product, you need to first define your target market. This way, you can build a product that’s tailored, and therefore relevant, to your target market. You’d also be able to effectively reach and market to your target. Ultimately, you’d be able to build a brand that delivers value.
A target is a specific segment of people with whom you’d attempt to create a connection. The more focused you are in defining your target market, the more likely you’d be able to successfully create a meaningful connection. The target market isn’t necessarily the only group of people who may ultimately find value in your product. It is the group of people you’ll deliberately try to influence. Winning over this specific group of people will lay the foundation of a brand.
The first step is to define the demographic attributes. Demographic attributes are attributes such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, employment status, and location. You can think of demographic attributes as anything that can be checked off in a Census survey.
20–40 year old tech-savvy male primarily on the coasts in New York and San Francisco — Tim Ferriss on his target market for The 4-Hour Workweek
To add dimension to the target profile, define the psychographic attributes. Psychographic attributes provide more color and flavor to the definition. It includes dimensions such as personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle.
something about downtown girls. It’s an effortless kind of sexiness that’s the way they show up and it’s the way they go home — Ed Razek, CMO for Victoria’s Secret on Victoria fragrance
Having a clear idea of who your target market is is the first step toward creating a brand that will be relevant to your buyers, build upon genuine connections.
This is an important step for B2C and B2B businesses alike. For businesses, the “demographic” attributes will include dimensions that will provide definition to the business itself such as industry, business sizes, location. “Psychographic” attributes include the personality of the business. An example of a business target profile would be bakeries with 3–5 locations in the Northeast, with focuses on a vegan menu and are heavily involved in local hunger issues.
In fact, this is a fundamental step toward building a brand!
Who is the target market for your brand?
Student testimonials:
I really loved this class. I know NOTHING about branding and marketing and have taken at least 10 classes on the subject to date. This is the first class I took where I felt like I actually understood the concepts. I’ve been feeling incredible stupid up to this point because the instructors just seem to babble on using jargon and terms I don’t understand. Jeannie’s class breaks it down in layman’s terms so now I understand that to create the brand identity. among other things, involves the functional & emotional benefits of your product… There are questions to answer concerning your product or company in each lesson that were extremely helpful to me being able to wrap my head around what branding is and how to go about applying it to my products. I highly recommend this class to anyone who’s like me and needs a step-by-step, broken down approach to branding you products or company.
-Denise P.
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