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Step 2: Define Your Target Audience & Positioning Based on Market Research

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Now that you’ve identified your purpose, it’s time to define your target audience and write your brand positioning statement. To do this, you need to do some prior market research! This lesson is divided into three parts doing your research, identifying your target audience, and finally, writing your brand positioning statement!

Part 1. Do Your Research

First, you need to do some market research corresponding to your brand. Research your potential customers and above all, research your competition. This will help you create a brand that resonates with your target market.

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market. It helps you to understand your customers and what they want. It also helps you to understand your competition and what they are doing. There are many ways to do market research. You can use online tools, such as surveys and social media, or you can hire a research company. There are also many free resources available, such as government data and trade associations.

First, you can look at your competitors’ websites and marketing materials. See what they’re doing that’s working well, and take note of any areas where you could improve upon their approach. You can also read online reviews of your competitors’ products or services. What do customers like about them? What do they complain about? This feedback can give you insights into how to better position your brand. Your competition can be divided into two categories: direct and indirect. Direct competitors are businesses that offer the same product or service as you do. Indirect competitors are businesses that offer a different product or service, but satisfy the same need or want as your business does.

Once you have an understanding of who your competition is, you can start to research your potential customers. Talk to people in your target market directly. Ask them what they’re looking for in a product or service like yours. What would make them choose your brand over others? These conversations can give you invaluable insights into how to create a winning brand strategy. There are several ways to do this, but some of the most common methods include surveys, focus groups, and interviews.

Surveys: You can create surveys to collect data from your target market. This data can be used to understand the needs and wants of your potential customers.

Focus groups: Focus groups allow you to gather qualitative data from a group of people in a controlled setting. This data can be used to understand the motivations and concerns of your target market.

Interviews: Interviews are another way to collect qualitative data from individuals in your target market. This data can be used to understand the thoughts and feelings of your potential customers about your product or service.

The most important thing is to get started! Don’t wait until you have everything perfect before you start marketing your business. The more you know about your target market, the better equipped you’ll be to reach them with your brand.

Part 2. Identify Your Target Audience

Based on the research you did in part 1, identify your target audience (target customer) and be very specific about this person. Specify the age, gender, behaviour, demographics & interests  among many other important characteristics about your target customer. To help you in this process, we have prepared a worksheet for you to answer and download below. Take a pen and get working!

Part 3. Determine Your Brand Positioning

Transcript

We have positioning, we have branding. Is it the same or different? Actually positioning, it is the very quick answer to a question: who you are. For example, I am Olga Royenko, creative entrepreneur, marketer and CEO of marketing agency. This is my positioning, but not brand. My brand actually is about my purpose. What is my purpose? To make companies independent on marketing agencies. How? By setting up marketing function inside the companies. Then my brand is about how I look like, what is my visual style of my agency, how I sound and what information I share and more important of course, what projects we complete and how we tell people about it. So while positioning is really short answer to the question who you are and what you do, branding is a different points of connection with your audience, customers and clients and partners. What they see, what they hear and how they feel next to you. This is all about branding.
Your brand positioning statement outlines exactly what your business does, for who and what makes you different from your competitors. You should be able to show the unique selling proposition of your brand in the minds of customers within a specific market. Are you ready to write your own brand positioning statement? Here’s a worksheet with a template, example and format to get you started with your brand positioning statement: