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Your Time and Action Assumptions

Who is your target market and how do you find it? Okay, so this is often quite a hard thing to stop because really, when you're working on a on a on a target market, it's you think that everyone wants to buy your product? It's is I who wouldn't want to buy my product because it's awesome and, you know, I'm addressing every single kind of demographic, but looking at the kind of target market I find it's really helpful to kind of focus, focus in on three key elements relieve customer location and the business model that you you want to be working with. So when it comes to customer okay, thinking about the age, the gender, the demographic, psychographic ce kind of the interest that you, you think your customer is going to be the age group that they need to be kind of pitched that to really appreciate your product for the location is it is a local customer or you're going to be selling internationally, because then you have to kind of consider not only kind of practical implications about ...

how you got cell, but also is it is it culturally wrote culturally relevant to where these people are that's also an important thing to think about for the business model? How are you going to sell it? Is it going to be online? Is it going to be wholesale? Is it going to be at a craft market eyes it going to be on? Ah you know like that like an etc and online eighty storeys it going to be on your own website? These are all things that you need tio really just consider and think think about um start building a list of these elements because everything that we go through again I'm going to mention the whole the p were the principal word again its principles that you need to work within in order to kind of make it very relevant to your to your line. So really if you're looking at a customer profiles that might might tip is a customer profile should include a name, profession, lifestyle, location and hobbies so you're building an imaginary friend basically you can talk to in the dark just hours when it's like two o'clock in the morning and you're like nor my making this product for it's it's for it's for amber, who lives in san francisco and you know it's it's, that imaginary person so it's really for me the customer profile in the target market is divines the what the where and the how much if you kind of break it down into into those kind of bite size pieces so I did a cz you can probably imagine and excited to hear about this suzy scarves has a a customer profile she actually has to customers um I'm pitching for our very wide audience here because I think that everyone is going to be blown away by my product so I have I have two different age groups because I I believe for my product it can attack two different age groups with different needs so so I have chloe who is just the man I am no these people these air you know I don't know chloe I don't know a junior hopefully by the end of the two sessions I will and they'll be like buying my product so chloe is female she's eighteen to forty five which is a large age group she's married urbanite lives in the yusa employed or self employed she shops online and also in store so she's used to kind of buying without trying she follows fashion limited disposal disposable income on dh she likes music cocktails and traveling ok so so this is kind of really focused on the kind of the young the funky if I was going to do a silk scarf it will be like a bright pop color something kind of pretty cool uses an accessory or tie round you know you're the handle of your personal something my second target customer is julia who is forty five to eighty married or unmarried suburbanite in the u s a employed self employed, she shops mostly in store she's not averse to shopping online, but she prefers to shop in store more than ever she style conscious she is disposable income she likes theater, music and the outdoors ok, so there's my there's my imaginary people that I talk to when I'm working from home um so what's interesting about this is I and of course I kind of I have thought about the product that I'm selling and I've also thought about where I'm selling I'm going to launch on etc but I also don't want to just focus on one market because I wanted from my product line I want to be able to focus on two different people on it gives me the option to really build my lai now it doesn't narrow it doesn't kind of pigeonhole me into a small product it means I could do something slightly higher in price maybe a little bit more sophisticated in the design in the color but I can also had a little bit of kind of the windy or you know I love that word snarky is great, I love it, I'm going to start using it if you don't mind if I use it you're okay great so sesay scarves snarky yet windy so I have a new vision statement hey this's collaboration every yes in a matter of minutes, it's evolved, I like this by the end of it, it's going to be something completely different. So? So this is my target market for suzy scars. Now the key thing that I want you to take away from that is you need to kind of get into the mindset of your target customer I a lot of brands that I've worked with actually build a whole concept board like a board of images, and they take tearsheets at them and they put an imaginary person up there with the name this is chloe she's female, and they have ah, you know, like, you know, walking along and she's like like no action pose with her person, you know, chloe likes to swim in the sea, and they build this whole kind of target market customer board purely for the design team for when they're designing to look at and to remember exactly who they're designing for, and it sounds like a kind of a crazy thing to do, so build a picture of an imaginary person, but it everything that we go through is a is in the next two sessions is really to help to remind you of why you're doing this. Because it's it's an exhausting process developing a product and running a business and sometimes you lose sight of what your original passion is. So by having these visuals in front of you you just even on kind of like it's a very simple piece of paper vision statement mission statement images of your target customer it's a reminder of decide hey, you know what? This is going to be awesome, okay? And this is why I'm doing this so so from the susie scarves and from the target customer and you need to get into the mindset you need to understand your customer so listen, understand and act it's like who's my customer, what are they saying that they need? This is what I'm going to provide, ok? So by having that tool on being able to focus in it kind of keeps you going to use the phrase he keeps you honest keeps you realize to what you're doing ok? And I think that's invaluable yeah question from one of our online viewers and the question is, do you recommend that a tagline be similar or the same as a vision statement? How did taglines envision statements work together? I think they can I think they could be interchangeable I would the one thing I don't like sticking to the rules generally in life on also definitely within the industry I think that if you if you focus too much on something which is a kind of like a vision statement that big term vision statement often gets confusing as to what what you actually mean for tiger line makes more sense or even two key words makes more sense than focus on those two key words is whatever is going to remind you of what your processes on what your product is so don't get too kind of wrapped up in kind of everything has to be a mission or a vision it's for your benefits the principles that you need to work within to make it work for you thank you cool all right so we have a second do with the day second question so um really if this is about building a customer profile giving them a name a profession lifestyle and hobbies is so studio audience do you guys have kind of target customer in mind if you do you know the u anyone actually well I just I made a customer in the past week who is sticking in my mind because it was it was very she's a very specific customer and so she anyway she's a young professional he's a flight attendant and she actually pulled out her existing bag from her person she said I hate this bag like can I need something that's a different shape and it fits more products in it and it's pretty and she literally took her cover hundreds of her bag and dumped it into mine and was like this one's mine I'm taking the flood and so now I have her in mind because she it was serving a purpose for her and she kind of had the sort of lifestyle and hobbies you know, she could tell she she follows fashion and she was very, you know, trendy and and, you know, working well working lady who was just, like, tired of having, you know, something impacting practicality. Yeah, so I think I have her in mind is one of my great do you know her name? Robin? Robin, robin, if you're there, I love it. Robin the flight attendant did she like cocktails? I I would I don't know, I would imagine cocktails it yeah, everyone likes a cocktail, everything comes out, anyone else anything spring to mind with? Target customer names, images difficult for the I mean, I think that's something I definitely struggle with because of what I produced because they produce greeting cards and there are so they're so this is a broad range of what their function is, you know, from a sympathy card to a father's day card, teo, you know, so for me, I definitely feel like that's something that I'm interested in figuring out more and maybe it isn't just one person maybe like you have susie scarves you have two different people so maybe I have a handful of people that I can target but I guess the common thread would definitely be someone that had a sense of humor exactly. Yeah, I was going to say that I mean, I think your demographic is so broad yeah it's you either by ah very kind of like generic car you buy something you know kind of like women being snarky and kind of cute and funny if you fall into two different camps there so that's from listening tio you kind of passover information I would say that would be a starting point for you. Okay. Target customer? Yeah, definitely definitely. Yeah. Here people are sharing all of their different specific ones on sunshine too says that she's looking for working women with children who are thinly thinly spread stressed have to go out of their way to make time for themselves and then salmon kate designs is the target market is women sixteen to sixty year old photographers, bloggers and moms so we have some good ones coming into the challenge. I think some people need to go even further and actually give them names you have them or characteristic yeah, I mean, I think for me give it giving a name makes it more real yeah you know it's, a personality to it, it's this like, you know, it's two o'clock in the morning, so it's, like, why am I doing this? I'm doing this because khloe needs a scarf group that's, why you're doing that good with, yeah, put it, put a name on it, put an age, but it just take, you know, a picture, imaginary picture, know something from a magazine or something, put a face to it, because then you can talk to that person. Not, you know, saying that talking to imagine people is good and solid, but it helps you understand who your customer is.