Benefits of knowing your target audience. As a business, it’s important to understand your target audience. Knowing who you’re talking to can make a big difference when developing your branding and marketing plans.
By identifying your ideal consumer, your business can:
- Develop a winning brand identity. When you know your target audience, you can create a brand identity that speaks to their core values. This helps ensure your brand resonates with them.
- Craft marketing strategies that work. Sharing values with your target audience makes developing successful marketing campaigns with tangible impact easier. You know what messages will have meaning for them.
- Improve customer acquisition. It’s easier to get new customers when you know who to address and can tailor your branding and marketing toward that person’s interests — like a subculture or hobby.
- Enhance customer satisfaction. When you build a brand with a well-defined target audience, it’s easier to deliver on your brand promise. Your customers get what they expect from the brand. This can improve customer relationships and satisfaction.
- Promote brand loyalty. Satisfied customers are more likely to remain loyal to your brand, making it easier to keep current customers around. Plus, they might promote your small business to others through word-of-mouth.
If you don’t know your target audience, you may create unfocused branding and marketing materials that miss the mark — and attract negative attention from consumers.
One example is Levi’s “Hotness Comes in All Shapes and Sizes” campaign. The ad campaign for the brand’s Curve ID jeans was meant to target “curvier” women. However, the ad exclusively showed thin models — not representing the average American woman’s body. This alienated the brand’s target audience from the product.
