The Importance of Target Market for Brands

07 August 20

Having a clear target market is essential for a brand. It matters to understand that your target market is not everyone. Some might be able to answer who their ideal audience is, but some may not be able to. By knowing who you are talking to, who you are selling to, you could use the right approach for your brand to be relevant. Otherwise, your brand would not achieve the communication objectives intended. Among the easiest ways to do this is by creating a buyer personas for your company. This would narrow down the audience to a group of people with similar traits and interests.

However, this should not be about making assumptions. It needs to be a research-based process where you define potential customers in systematic methods aligned with the business objectives. This is how brands could take off, by aiming for  the right market for an effective and efficient result. This is as Peep Laja, one of the most influential Conversion Rate Optimization experts in the world, explained the importance of creating persona research and clearly understanding customer needs and wants. To him, it matters because your customer could not be just “everybody” because no one identified themselves with “everybody”. You need to identify your market as them specifically.

This process of researching who your target audience is basically a systematic approach of “talk to your audience”. Steve Blank, the author of The Startup Owner’s Manual, famously says “There are no facts inside your building, so get outside”. Once we “talk” to the customers, we get to know who they are and are able to write down their profile. This would be a solid foundation of building your brand strategy because you already understand whether they would find the communication approach you apply relatable or not. Get in their heads and put your brand at the right place based on why and how they are attracted to certain brands and businesses. Leading Brand consultants in Indonesia, Milestone as an instance, usually do this among their first steps regardless how “simple” a project is. It always serves as the basis for brand agencies in general for how essential it basically is.