Do you really know who your audience is?
This is a killer question that trips up more brands than you’d imagine when I ask it in my free consultations.
A lot of brands think they know their customer because they built consumer profiles when they first started out or even worst they have never completed one and continue to assume they know.
So let me ask you;
Do you really know who your target audience is? And does everything you do in your business speak to this target audience?
If the answer is no or you’re not sure then keep on reading, as this post is going to help you discover exactly who they are enabling you to redirect what you’re doing and connect with them.
Firstly let us recap on why it is so important to really know who your audience is.
Why?
- To ensure your product answers to their pain point and desires.
- To ensure the sales channels you use to sell your goods are actually where they spend their time browsing.
- To ensure your website messaging and functionality speaks their language.
- To ensure your tone of voice across all messaging is relevant to their age, values and language.
- To ensure your Facebook ads are effective and drive good ROI.
- To ensure your product pricing matches their wallets and meets their expectations.
Finally, what’s even more important is to highlight that this data changes and evolves with your brand over time.
So if you launched last year and haven’t re-assessed your audience data, you need to now.
It’s critical to check that who you set out to sell to is still the audience that buys from you today.
I recommend that you re-run this assessment as a minimum every season, to ensure that every collection strategy is built with your audience in mind.
I promise you that if you do this, your refreshed audience insight will either dazzle and inspire you or shock you into the reality of who is actually buying your product!
As soon as you have this insight you will then have a choice to:
- Focus in on this newfound audience that you never knew existed or that you had never intentionally targeted and maximise on this sales opportunity.
Or
- Be shocked and horrified by this wrong direction and make impactful changes to get you back on track.
Ok, enough about why it is so important to actually know who your audience is. Now let’s get into the criteria, the questions you need to ask yourself …
I’m going to give you the question you need to answer followed by several prompts. All you need to do is fill in the missing blanks and voila you will have discovered who your target audience is.
Who is your audience?
- Gender
- Age range
- Geo-location
- Single, married, living at uni, retired, kids etc
- Educated, if so to what level
- Do they have a job? Standard 9-5 or an entrepreneur or a mum
- How much money do they make? Disposable income or do they just get by
- Do they follow a religion
"I recommend that you run this re-assessment as a minimum every season, to ensure that every collection strategy is built with your audience in mind."
Unzipped
How do they like to be spoken to?
- What generation are they
- What are their trigger words
- How frequently
- What time of day and what day of the week
What do they love?
- Hobbies – what do they do in their spare time
- What topics do they follow
- What drives them to get up every day
- What are their hopes and dreams for the future
- What are they watching? Kardashian or presidential debate
- Do they love to travel or are they home bunnies
- Family and friends
What are their biggest fears and pain points?
- What areas of their life are they most unhappy with
- What stresses them out
- What in the future scares them
- What do they wish they had right now but don’t
Where do they hang out?
- What social channels do they most commonly use to follow and shop brands
What brands do they follow?
- List brands you believe/know they follow and this then becomes your competitor watch list
- What brands do they wear
What makes them buy?
- Is it trust and transparency
- Is it price and value for money
- Is it a recognised brand they can trust
- Is it because a friend was wearing it or a celebrity
What makes them NOT buy?
- Reverse the above answers along with remembering their pain points
- For this, I would recommend you check existing product reviews and comments on social channels
Lastly all that’s left to do is to answer does your fashion brand give them what they are looking for based on the above answers?
- Does your product solve a pain point?
- Does your offer speak to their values for example saving the planet – eco-friendly fibres?
- Are they willing to spend money on you or do you need to build more trust signals?
- Is your delivery service quick enough as they’re a busy mum or a travelling entrepreneur?
Does this all tie back to your website, any 3rd party channels, any ads or promotions you run, all touchpoint you have with your audience?
If not, this is your prompt to make improvements.
Prioritise the importance of each update and plot your action into Slack, Trello, Asana or similar to project manage through.
In summary, if you overlook knowing who your audience is you risk either launching a business that fails in year 1 or you risk running a struggling business that rarely hits its sales targets.
This really is a fundamentally important lesson. If you follow the above process as outlined, it will set your fashion brand up for success.
Discover who they are today, and next season and next year, to experience sales growth success.
If you need further help discovering who your audience is and refining your fashion brand to attract this audience book a free consultation call here as I’d be happy to help share more personalised advice.
