Speaker 1: What's up Brand Builders, Stephen Horahan here at brandmasteracademy.com and in this video you're going to learn how to identify your target market with this audience research process. So you can reduce the cost and increase the effectiveness of your marketing by delivering your brand message to the people who need it most. Now when it comes time to marketing and branding knowing how to analyze your target market is one of the first skills that you need to master. After all no matter what the business does without an audience it's irrelevant. The goal of branding is to shape perceptions. Now those perceptions live in the mind and those minds belong to your audience. So let's dive in and learn how to identify your target market. Now look every brand solves the problem of a want or a need. Now whether you're selling a soft drink or providing legal advice the consumer of both of these solutions have something in common. They have a desire to experience an outcome whether that outcome is refreshment or peace of mind. When you begin to identify your target market you need to first ask the question what group of people have the greatest desire to acquire the outcome that our solution provides. Now this question is the starting point which aims to narrow your audience from absolutely everybody to a specific group of people that represent your target audience otherwise known as a market segment. Using a series of tools your goal is to narrow and refine until you have a clear picture of who that audience is. And this picture is formed as a detailed outline of a fictional person or an audience persona who basically represents that group of people who have the greatest desire to acquire the outcome of your solution. With an audience persona crafted in the right way you can develop a communication strategy to resonate with their challenges and their pain points. In order to uncover this fictional person you need to know how to analyze your target audience so let's dive in. Step number one define your market demographics. Begin by categorizing your audience based on their circumstances with demographics. Now demographics are just a fancy word for the most basic tool that we use when defining your target audience. The more you know about your audience's circumstances the more effectively you can target them or communicate with them through your marketing efforts. Your demographics include but certainly aren't limited to the likes of their age, their race, gender, income, occupation, marital status, religion, education and location to name a few. Now although many of these characteristics will have little relevance really in how you communicate to them they all work together to paint a detailed picture which becomes very very influential when developing a communication strategy. Now if you don't have any of this information readily available social media provides a treasure trove of information that you can hack. Now the engagement on your competitors social pages will provide you with the exact profiles of the people who you're targeting where you can find as much demographic information as you need. Now of course there are many different research platforms that you can use that will gather this information for you the likes of Statista or Qualtrics but really any engagement on your competitors social pages will give you the profiles of the exact people that you're targeting which you can use to find their demographic information and create profiles that way so it does take a lot more effort doing it that way or you could go and use one of those resources that I mentioned before such as Statista or Qualtrics but at the end of the day that information is out there it's out there it's online you just need to roll up your sleeves and get it. Step number two uncover your market psychographics. Now psychographic analysis is a little more challenging because the information you base your analysis on is quite subjective when compared to the stat-based demographics by analyzing your audience's psychographics you get a window into their personality including their behaviors their attitudes their opinions and their preferences as well and this is where you really start to get a feel for who the person is behind that audience and these behavioral characteristics these human characteristics that shape those individuals. Now after identifying your audience profiles through demographics you can then dive into their likes their preferences and their behaviors by analyzing preferences such as their sports their activities their interests their hobbies music movies news political views food or restaurants and entertainment to name a few and when you start to understand this side of their lives you can really start to understand the personality behind the individual groups. Step number three develop your audience persona. Now using the information that you gather from your analysis on demographics and on psychographics you want to begin building your audience persona. Now you might find that your broader target audience can be further segmented into a specific group or otherwise known as market segments and you might want to create individual audience personas for each of these segments. Now you can compile your information in a simple spreadsheet or grab any one of those freebie buyer personas or customer avatars that you'll find online and begin compiling all of your data and developing out your audience personas. Now obviously if you're developing these for your clients you'd have your own custom design template which you would then slot into the strategy document. Step number four map the customer journey. Now once you have your detailed audience persona you then need to uncover the lives they lead and the journey they're on until they reach that heightened point of desire for the outcome. Now although this group of people will be on their own individual journeys all of these journeys have many commonalities and all roads lead to the same epiphany and that epiphany is the realization of the desire for that outcome. Now this realization is the point of the journey that the brand must be most aware of because it's where they can resonate most effectively with the audience through emotion. From here the journey has a fork in the road one direction leads to the desirable outcome and the other leads to an undesirable outcome. Forums and social groups they're a great place to find the questions that your audience have in and around the outcome that you provide. Now look chances are there might be hundreds of smaller challenges that contribute to increasing that desire for the outcome that you offer and as a brand understanding these challenges and understanding those progressive steps you can map out the journey to meet them where they are meet them on the road and guide them to the safety of your solution. Step number five identify the challenges and the pain points. Now the journey that leads your audience to your solution is full of challenges as I mentioned before. Now these challenges are critical because they increase that emotional tension and the desire for that outcome and overcoming these challenges bring them closer to that outcome that they desire most which your brand can obviously help them with. Your brand provides that outcome so giving them those stepping stones get them closer to that outcome and if you are the brand that gives those stepping stones to them their believability and their trust in your brand increases as well. By identifying each and every one of the challenges that your audience faces and then the related pain point to those challenges you arm yourself with the tools that you need to help them along the way. Whether through a piece of content how-to video or a little bit of inspiration you can help them along the way and become part of their journey long before you put your offer in front of them. Again forums groups and anywhere your audience asks questions in and around the solution that you offer is your go-to for identifying these challenges. Step number six uncover your audience's emotions through reviews. Now your customers will have two very distinct states in relation to the outcome that they want to achieve. Now in order to get to that outcome they'll go through an experience and the end result will be either an outcome that they're happy with or an outcome that they're unhappy with. Now these two states are known as the before state and the after state and by identifying the emotional connection they have before the solution you can uncover very powerful emotional insights into their fears and desires. Now their desires represent the outcome that they most want while their fears represent the outcome that they want to avoid. Now uncovering this information is critical because it's from these emotional connections these fears these desires that you can build a communication strategy that will resonate with who they are and what they're going through. Review sites are a window into these emotions positive reviews represent desired outcomes and negative reviews represent feared outcomes. Now of course knowing how to analyze your target audience through review sites is so powerful because these reviews are often highly charged with emotion and lay bare the fears and the desires that you can gather. So how do you use target market segmentation? Well different people experience problems in different ways. Once you analyze your audience and define who they are you might find that this group could be further categorized based on their journeys, emotional involvement, level of desire or consequences among other things. Now each of these groups are possible segments that you can target more specifically. By developing an audience persona for each one of these market segments you can develop more specified communication strategies to resonate with them on a deeper level. Now look connecting with your audience is about specificity if you can make them feel that you're speaking directly to them and about their exact situation as opposed to speaking to a broad group of people you're far more likely to resonate with them. Knowing how to analyze your audience is a highly critical skill that every brand builder must develop. As you enhance your processes and techniques you begin to uncover more effective insights that you can use in your brand development processes. Now the next video up here will help you dive deeper into brand strategy but before you click on that video make sure you subscribe if you want to become a master brand builder for your own brand or for your clients.