"Working women aged 18-30" isn't your target audience.

Being a 25-year-old working woman isn’t a personality trait. Successful brands connect with their customers based on personality, not profile.

When we work with brands and talent, one of the most important questions we ask upfront is: “Who is your target audience”

And typically we get answers like this:

• “An 18-30 year-old woman who has a good job and disposable income”

• “A [Black woman] // [plus sized] // [insert another adjective] person”

It might sound fine, but in practice, especially for businesses with smaller marketing budgets, it’s far too general. Years ago, before the internet completely changed how brands can communicate, you might have been able to get away with targeting such a broad group. But these days there’s just too much competition, too many options, and too much noise to cast such a wide net.

If you want your brand to be remembered by potential customers, you’re going to have to give them a bit more than that. You’re going to have to get to know your ideal customer(s) on a more intimate level.

“A friend to many is a friend to none” - psychographics over demographics

That applies to your marketing too.

It’s no wonder that when we project broad stereotypes onto other people when we sell our products and services, our marketing efforts fall flat.

An age range, a job, a race isn’t a personality. It’s a demographic. Don’t get me wrong, demographics are important, psychographics go deeper.

Psychographics examine the motivations, attitudes, and underlying ‘whys’ behind individual shopping decisions. Nailing your psychographics affects everything — how your brand speaks, the types of campaigns you create, the tone of your customer service and so much more.

At SBM this is our rule of thumb:

If you can’t describe 2-3 different personalities of your main followers/customers in detail, as if they are your best friends, then you don’t understand your customer. 

Here’s a preview of what we share in our new Marketing Academy Programme launching in a couple of weeks.

Here’s a quick example.

Let’s imagine you’re a new coffee brand that’s launching.

You could say:

“We’re targeting 18-30-year-old working women”

A quick Google search pulls up images like this:

With psychographics, you’d understand that not all working women have the same ambitions. With psychographics you’d get more specific to say something like:

“I’m targeting [working women] who [love their corporate day job or small business but aren’t satisfied with mediocre, they’re aspiring to have a life 10x bigger than where they are now]”

You’ve gone beyond talking about WHAT they are to WHY they are

And when you identify the why, you’re able to speak directly to someone’s needs, concerns, dreams, and aspirations.

You’re able to clearly explain how your service or product fits into their lives and solves a problem they have or helps fulfill an aspiration. In short, you quickly shift from selling a product or service to giving them solutions that they’d be foolish to live without.

So back to this corporate worker who is aspiring for a 10x life. She might resonate more with images like this one.

Which one do you resonate with more?

Marketing and connection are all about resonance: how much a customer relates and identifies (sees themselves in your product). That’s what makes us choose between the 1,000s of different brands that sell similar products.

When you move beyond price/savings-based promotion (which we all want to do, who wants to be in a race to the bottom?), you step into the space of designing products, services, and experiences that your audience can resonate with. So for example, if you’re a fashion brand, your marketing starts before you’ve even designed the clothes. Because different designs connect with different audiences.

When you launch a website, marketing plays a role there too, always ask yourself: “Can my ideal customers see themselves in what I’m producing right now?” Marketing is an essential part of the entire business process, not an optional add-on at the end. And the sooner you can embed these principles into your brand, the sooner you’ll see a shift.