A guide WITH THE BEST KNOW-HOW AND TIPS FOR Finding the ideal target group FOR YOUR BRAND
We at FAIRLING have the mission to connect brands and retailers from all around the world and to make the world of wholesale a better and more sustainable place.
In our How To & Tips guide on this blog we want to give you the best possible advice for your business so you are ready for takeoff with the most important tips and advice. Today’s advice will be all about targeting and how you can find the ideal target groups for your brand.
What you need to know about defining a target group
Brands must offer their target group consistency and continuity in order to retain their loyalty in the long term. For this to succeed, the brand must first be positioned. Where does the brand stand in the market and who is its target group? You have to answer these two questions in the course of positioning your brand. An important step in this process is the development of a marketing strategy and a brand model, which is one of the most effective tools for developing strong brands. In the following article you will learn what you need to know about segmenting the market, defining your target audience and developing a brand model.
The long-term goal of digital brand management is always to build a strong brand with high brand equity and to maintain a strong position in the market. In this context, the term brand equity encompasses much more than its German-language counterpart, brand value. While the latter mainly refers to the monetary aspects of a brand, brand equity also includes the intangible values of a brand – such as the sense of belonging to a group, the status associated with it, and its identification potential.
The Value of a brand
These intangible values provide a broad field for competitive differentiation. Thus, the additional benefits of the brand perceived by the target group also make price premiums possible compared to competing products. The best example of this is the Apple brand and its products. Higher brand equity is so important because it automatically goes hand in hand with a stronger preference for the brand and higher customer loyalty.
Accordingly, brands offer customers not only a tangible benefit, but also an intangible one. The value of a brand arises from the relationship between it and its customers. This is built up and maintained through skilful brand management. Here, the three most important decision areas of brand management are distinguished as follows:
- The development of a brand strategy
- The development of a marketing mix strategy
- Marketing control
Who is Your target group?
Who is my target group and what do they want – these are the questions that drive every brand. Since you want to target your potential customers with your brand, you also need to know who they are and what they want from you. So before you can get started with your marketing strategy, you need to define your target group and determine how best to reach them. This is done by dividing the market into different groups of buyers through customer segmentation. Within the market, different customers have different needs – and you should be aware of these, because only then can you make your offer attractive and relevant and be successful in the long term.
While individuals within a segmented group should be as similar as possible, individual groups should be as distinct as possible. To segment, you should use the following criteria:
- Demographic: gender, age, marital status, income
- Geographic: local, regional, national, international
- Psychographic: needs, attitudes, values, lifestyle
- Behavior related to the brand/product: use of the product, brand loyalty, frequency of use, status of customers
Which segmentation criteria you ultimately choose depends on your brand and the market in which it is represented. Generally, you should use psychographic and behavioral criteria because they allow for clearer and more defined segments. By the way, behavioral criteria also includes data generated by the interaction between users and your website and social media presences. Their analysis provides you with highly differentiated segments, which is why we can only recommend them to you.
other criteria for defining your target group
On the other hand, we do not recommend using only demographic criteria. For example, the days when people in the same age group had the same lifestyle are long gone. You would not get clearly defined segments based on demographic criteria, which would make a brand strategy based on them less successful. As already mentioned, the potential customers within a segment should be as similar as possible so that your brand strategy has the greatest possible success.
When deciding on a specific target group, you should consider the attractiveness of the market segments as well as the resources available to you. The following criteria can be helpful in selecting the right segment:
- Identifiability: can the segment be clearly identified, resulting in an accurate profile of the potential customer?
- Size: Is the size of the segment sufficient to realize your profitability and sales targets?
- Accessibility: Can you reach the customers with existing sales and distribution channels? Are there channels through which you can communicate with customers?
- Responsiveness: How likely is it that your target audience will respond positively to your offering and choose your brand over competitors?
- Stability: Will customers behave in a sufficiently stable manner over time for your marketing strategy to be effective?
- Actionability: Does the profile of the segment have links to the marketing mix and brand strategy that align with the brand’s objectives?
However you define your brand’s target group, this always has a major influence on your company’s brand portfolio. While large companies often want to address the entire market or at least numerous segments by means of different brands or a wide range of products under one umbrella brand, smaller companies are more likely to adopt a niche strategy by addressing only a specific segment. Volkswagen is an excellent example of the former, while Ferrari is a typical representative of the niche solution.
the positioning of your brand
After you’ve figured out who you want to target with your brand, it’s a matter of determining how to go about it. The right tool for this is brand positioning. This helps you to win customers permanently and to prevail against competitors. Two approaches familiar from advertising are helpful here:
Unique Selling Point (USP): This concept is made up of the elements Selling (sales orientation), Point (value point of the brand) and Unique (uniqueness), the latter being the most important in marketing. In today’s marketing, the sole occupation of market positions and the resulting differentiation from competitors play the most important role.
Positioning: This concept is all about brand positioning and also emphasizes the elements of differentiation and uniqueness as the main factors of brand positioning. The customer’s perception of the brand plays the central role. For this reason, it is also the most important task of a brand to anchor a clear message in order to be perceived at all by its target group. This is made more difficult by the fact that customers today are confronted with different messages from all sides.
Continuity is key for success
Continuity as well as consistency of a brand in the brand perception of customers have since been considered the most important goals of brand positioning. Defining a brand through its positioning puts the marketing department in the role of a watchdog, ensuring that the principles of brand positioning are precisely adhered to.
Brands are successful when they know their target group and know exactly how to address them. In order to achieve this with your brand, you first need to segment the market to see which areas you can occupy with your brand. Several factors play an important role in choosing the right segment. These differ from brand to brand and must be determined individually. After you have defined your target group, you should think about a strategy to successfully address them. Brand positioning is the right tool for this.
Even if there are times when wholesaling seems more difficult, it’s still important to be visible and tell the shops about your great products. Maybe you got some ideas from this article and found inspiration on how to make your ads on FAIRLING interesting.
If this was an old hat for you, you are probably searching for some resellers for your products. We would love to help you find those. Just book a free demo call and we will be very happy to talk with you about your possibilities or answer your questions!
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