Knowing Your Audience & Finding Your Voice
KNOWNG YOUR AUDIENCE & FINDING YOUR VOIC
PART TWO OF A THREE PART SERIES
EPISODE 052 | APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY
Welcome back to our three-part series on building a robust brand identity! Over three weeks, I’ll be leading you through a 3-part workshop focused on the essentials of branding and its role in your business's success. We'll explore how to create a unique brand identity that truly connects with your target audience. Throughout this series, we’ll cover a wide range of topics, from visual elements and storytelling, to audience understanding and maintaining brand consistency.
“Whether you’re at the beginning of creating your brand or aiming to refine your current brand, these episodes will offer valuable insights and practical strategies to enhance your brand identity.”
In the previous episode, we explored the fundamentals of branding and the components that contribute to a strong brand identity. We discussed how branding is more than just a logo or tagline – it’s about how your business is perceived by your customers and encompasses your values, mission, visual elements, and voice.
In today’s episode, we’ll dive into two important aspects of branding: identifying your target audience and developing your unique brand voice. Knowing your audience is essential for creating a brand that truly resonates. We’ll explore methods to research and understand their preferences and needs and discuss how to define your brand’s voice and tone to align with your company’s mission and values.
“So, if you’re ready to deepen your understanding of your audience and find your brand’s voice, let’s get started.”
IDENTIFYING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
Understanding your target audience is a key part in shaping a brand identity that truly resonates. Knowing who your audience is, what they care about, and what they need allows you to tailor your branding efforts to speak directly to them. This connection can significantly enhance customer loyalty, engagement, and the overall success of your brand.
First, let's discuss the importance of knowing your audience. Your brand identity should reflect the values, desires, and lifestyle of your target audience. When you have a clear understanding of who your audience is, you can create a brand that feels personal and relevant to them. And it’s this alignment that helps to build a sense of trust, which is really important. Your customers must trust you and your brand.
To effectively understand your target audience, it’s important to take time and be proactive about conducting thorough research. There are several ways you can do this. One effective method is to create and distribute surveys and questionnaires. These tools allow you to gather direct feedback from your existing customers. By asking questions about their preferences, challenges, and what they value most about your products or services, you can gain valuable insights that help shape your brand strategy.
Another valuable resource is social media analytics. Using tools like Facebook Insights, Instagram Analytics, and Twitter Analytics can help you see who is engaging with your content. These tools provide data on demographics, interests, and behaviour patterns, allowing you to identify trends and better understand your audience’s engagement with your brand.
Customer feedback and reviews are another critical source of information. Pay attention to the key words that customers say when they talk about your brand, and spend time deeply understanding what genuinely matters to them and what they find valuable. Because you know your brand so well, and there may well be elements that you consider relatively standard, because it comes so naturally to you, but to your customer, these could quite easily be stand out elements and the very reason why they value what you offer so much. I find that this happens much of the time. Often the key values, the ones that you should be focussing on, are the very elements that you think are quite normal. They can be easy to dismiss and therefore sit in the background of your communication, when in fact they should be centre stage.
“So for example, one of the elements I hear my own audience frequently commenting on, is the clarity and simplicity of the business lessons within our courses. I take this for granted as this comes very naturally to me, the ability to break complex topics down and present them in a jargon free, simplistic way. But for my students, when they often join the courses after having been seriously overwhelmed with endless other forms of highly confusing and complex books and online tutorials, they describe my teaching as calm, and above all, transformative.”
So, look for common themes or recurring points of praise and feedback. This feedback will give you a clear picture of what your audience values and then look to broadcast these elements through your brand voice and communication.
Finally, make use of market research reports and industry studies to refine and strengthen your brand identity. These resources can help you gain a deeper understanding of market trends and consumer behaviour within your industry. By examining these reports, you can stay up to date with broader industry shifts and tailor your brand strategy to meet evolving market demands. There are a number of resources that can be helpful for small creative businesses when it comes specifically to developing a strong brand identity.
For example, Statista is a comprehensive database that offers statistics and studies from over 22,500 sources. Let’s say you're a craft business owner. Statista can help you understand which handmade products are trending, what price points are most attractive to consumers, and which demographics are most likely to purchase your items. This kind of data can help you refine your product offerings and marketing strategies to better appeal to your target audience, reinforcing your brand’s relevance and appeal.
Another excellent resource is IBISWorld, which provides detailed industry reports covering a variety of sectors. Say you run a boutique fashion label. IBISWorld’s reports can give you insights into the competitive landscape, potential market opportunities, and industry conditions. For instance, if their reports show a growing trend in sustainable fashion, you can focus your efforts on eco-friendly fabrics and ethical production methods, setting your brand apart from less environmentally conscious brands and aligning your identity with current consumer values.
Mintel is also a great option, known for its market research reports on consumer products and trends. Suppose you own a bakery. Mintel’s reports can offer deep dives into consumer preferences, such as the rising demand for gluten-free or vegan products. By understanding these trends, you can expand your menu to include more of these options, thus attracting a broader customer base and strengthening your brand’s reputation for catering to diverse dietary needs.
By using these resources, as small creative business owners, we can gain valuable insights into market trends, consumer behaviours, and industry conditions. This information is not just for large corporations but is incredibly valuable for founders of small businesses, where we are looking to refine our strategies, attract the right audience, and grow sustainably. By combining these methods, you can really begin to build a comprehensive understanding of your target audience, which is so important for developing a brand identity that truly resonates with them.
“Once you have gathered enough data, the next step is to create customer personas. These personas are fictional characters that represent different segments of your target audience. They help humanise your audience and guide your branding efforts.”
There are a few steps to follow, to help you create effective customer personas:
Demographic Information: Include age, gender, income, education, occupation, and location. This basic information helps set the foundation for understanding who your customers are.
Psychographic Information: Dive deeper into their lifestyle, interests, values, and attitudes. What are their hobbies? What do they care about? What are their pain points and challenges?
Behavioural Patterns: Look at how they interact with brands. What are their buying habits? How do they use your product or service? What are their preferred channels of communication?
Goals and Motivations: Understand what drives them. What are they looking to achieve? How can your brand help them meet their goals?
Challenges and Pain Points: Identify the problems they face that your brand can solve. This helps in creating messaging that addresses their needs directly. It doesn’t need to be life-changing solutions, but rather practical and effective remedies that simplify their daily lives, improve convenience, or enhance their overall experience with your product or service.
By developing detailed customer personas, you can ensure that your brand identity aligns with the expectations and desires of your audience. These personas serve as a reference point for all your branding decisions, from the tone of your messaging to the design of your logo and beyond.
Knowing your target audience inside and out is the key to building a brand that resonates and stands the test of time.
DEVELOPING YOUR UNIQUE BRAND VOICE
Let's move on to your brand identity by developing your unique brand voice. Your brand voice is the distinct personality and style of communication that can broadcast your authenticity, clearly set you apart from other brands and help to ensure that your brand really does resonate with your target audience. It's how your brand speaks to your customers and the impression it leaves.
To define your brand’s voice and tone, start by reflecting on your company’s core values, mission, and the emotions you want to evoke in your audience. Imagine your brand as a person. Is it formal or casual? Friendly or authoritative? Fun or serious? Define a few key characteristics that best describe your brand’s personality. For instance, if you’re a small bakery, your brand voice might be warm and welcoming, like a friendly neighbour. If you’re a media tech startup, it might be innovative and confident.
Think about who your target audience is and what kind of communication they would respond to best. The tone you use should be relatable and appealing to them. For example, if you’re targeting young adults, a casual tone might work best. For a more professional audience, a formal and polished tone would be more appropriate.
Creating a voice chart can be very helpful. List a few adjectives that describe your brand’s voice and provide examples of how these would translate into written or spoken communication. This chart will serve as a guideline for maintaining consistency. For example, if one of your adjectives is “friendly,” an email might start with “Hi there!” rather than “Dear Hannah”.
Your first step is to look at your existing content to see what has resonated well with your audience. Identify patterns in language and tone that align with your brand’s personality. If certain phrases or styles of communication have been particularly effective, make note of them and try to use them more frequently.
Your brand voice should also reflect your company's mission and values. This alignment ensures authenticity and helps build trust with your audience. For example, if your mission includes sustainability, your brand voice might be earnest and inspiring, focusing on how customers can make a positive impact through their choices. This mission-driven communication can be woven into all your content, subtly reinforcing your core values.
Consistency is key. Whether it's a social media post, a blog article, or a customer service email, your brand voice should remain consistent. This consistency helps reinforce your brand’s identity and makes it easily recognisable. Free online tools like Grammarly or Hemingway can help you maintain a consistent tone across your writing. Additionally, platforms like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer can ensure your messaging is effective and on-brand.
By following these steps, you’ll develop a brand voice that resonates with your audience and clearly communicates who you are as a business. This will help build stronger connections with your customers and really begin to set you apart.
CONCLUSION
As we come to the end of this episode, let’s do a quick recap, we explored the importance of knowing your target audience and developing a unique brand voice. We discussed how understanding your audience is crucial in shaping a brand identity that resonates, and we provided methods to research and create customer personas. We also delved into defining your brand’s voice and tone and aligning it with your company’s mission and values.
In the next episode, we'll focus on visual branding, crafting your brand story, and implementing and maintaining your brand identity. We’ll cover in more depth, following on from the first episode in the series, how to design a logo, choose a colour palette, and maintain consistency across all of your platforms. We’ll also explore how to communicate your brand story effectively and ensure your brand identity remains relevant over time.
With huge love,
Philippa