The Daily Carnage

The first steps to any marketing strategy have to do with goals and your target audience. But what if you don’t know who the heck you are targeting?

Build your target audience in these 4 steps with all the right questions along the way:

Step 1: Create Broad Descriptions of Your Ideal Customers

Start with your current actual audience. Check out your brand’s reviews and consider your customers’ attitudes toward your product. Ask yourself: Why would someone choose your product over your competition’s?

Create some generic customer profiles based on some of those answers.

Step 2: Research Your Potential Customers’ Demographics

You have some general ideas, now add more detail. Potential demographic information to research can include: age, location, job/title/income, family status, preferred social media sites, competitor purchases, subscriptions, hobbies, etc.

Step 3: Identify the Needs and Problems of Your Target Audience

Now think through sweet spots and pain points for the type of people in your profiles and demographics. You want to think about what motivates them, prevents them, concerns they might have, and if your product solves a problem.

Step 4: Determine Where Customers Will Find You

Think about how customers will find your company or offerings. The three main questions for figuring that out are:

• What websites do they visit?
• What blogs/publications do they read?
• What are the search terms they use? (These are NOT always the search terms you would use)

Check out Easy Affiliate’s full post for profile examples and more details on finding your target audience.

Brand architecture is your structure to your offerings and brand identity(ies). But not all foundations are the same. HubSpot has mapped out the different types and how to develop one of your own.

Types of Brand Architecture Models

• Branded House: This combines several house brands under a single umbrella brand (think Virigin with Virgin Mobile, Virgin Galactic, etc.).
• House of Brands: This architecture focuses on the sub-brands, allowing the parent brand to remain free of the same positioning as these often very different brands (think Unilever and their many brands).
• Hybrid Brand: This model combines the house of brands and branded house models where the parent brand can be positioned with sub brands (Alphabet uses this model very clearly with Google products).
• Endorsed Brand: This model has a master brand with sub-brands that rely on an association (usually product-based like Rice Krispies to Kellogg’s).

 

How to Develop Brand Architecture

1. Research – Sometimes you don’t choose a model, a model chooses you. Understand your own business very well through competitor and performance data to organize it in a way that makes sense for your customers and industry. This is a good time to review your company’s mission, vision, and values as well.
2. Strategy – Test out each architecture to see how your brand would work in each. For instance, not all brands can be grouped under the parent brand if customers won’t understand a connection. Outline the connections between the master brands, sub-brands, and products or services.
3. Application – When sharing it with your team and stakeholders, make sure to include a clear structure that highlights the relationships between the master brand, sub-brands, and offerings.
4. Look Ahead – As your company grows, your brand architecture must adapt appropriately. Review it when big changes happen!

Check out the full HubSpot post for real brand examples and details on each step towards your own brand architecture.