Understanding Your Target Audience

Dan Webster | Creative Director

Dan is one of the directors at Ingot, a digital design studio working out of Panama Square. Ingot design and create custom websites and help businesses with strategic digital presence.

EMAIL: dan@ingot.nz
INSTAGRAM: @ingot.nz
FACEBOOK: @ingot.nz
WEBSITE: www.ingot.nz

Panama Square residents, Ingot, share their process on understanding your target audience and what needs to happen before a creative and effective website can take shape.

At Ingot we do coffee chats, exploratory workshops, get loose with our digital crayons and last but not least, we then build some websites. There’s a lot of thinking that needs to be thunk before a pixel hits the screen.

You know your business better than we do, but to truly help us understand what you do, who you do it for and what passions or goals drive you forward, we need to trawl inside your head for a bit. We find our Ingot Explore Workshops to be the most kosher, but you can do it for yourself too. 

How to understand your target customer.

It involves several questions, and a bit of heavy pondering. So we’ve outlined a simplified version that runs you through how to understand your target market, put yourself in their shoes, and use this knowledge to improve what will go on your website or how to market your product/service.

Understand your target market:

• Create a bio for them. Name / gender / age etc. It’s easier to visualize a target market if you can base them off an actual client or ideal client.

• Know their story. Understanding their hopes, fears, personality and ideals will help you understand how to pitch your product or service.

• What do they need? Jot down why they would need your service and how they would come to the realization that they need to find a solution? This will help you to know where to meet them at the point where they are most likely to use your service/product.

• What are you going to do about it? How will you exceed their expectations and solve their needs better than your competition?

Now that you know WHO you are trying to target, how are you going to capture them?

• You’re not alone in your industry…unless you’re lucky enough to be in a very niche market, you need to communicate why you are better, more convenient, cheaper or better quality than the competition. Find that point of difference and hone in on it.

• What makes something memorable? Scandalize, educate, empower and delight! The former doesn’t always work for businesses… so generally focus on the other three. Based on all the delightful data you’ve procured in the previous stage, engage them by;
  
  1) educating or upskilling your target market. Provide advice, blogs, tools and resources that cement you as the leader in your field.
  2) empowering them to solve their issue or pain point. Show that you understand the problem they face and provide the solution to their problem.
  3) delighting them. Have engaging elements on your website that grab attention, humor and entertain. Visualize a brand personality, community and tribe that your target market wants to align with and be a part of.

So that’s where we start before embarking on the design process. Finding clarity and understanding about who your target market really is and what they want, helps to create a website and brand that your target audience relates to, wants to engage with and ultimately solves their need.

For Ingot, this is the critical step before we pick up our drawing pads and get to work.