Designing for a target audience
It’s important to understand your target audience so that your design reflects their likes and dislikes. But how do you know what your target audience desires so that you can catch their attention? Outlined below are some of the ways you can start working out your target audience and how to direct your design toward them.
Research your market
It’s important to do research. This includes researching companies that are similar to yours to see what’s already been done and what’s working. You don’t want to copy your competition, but stand out from them so that your audience will instantly recognise you. What you find through your research will help determine what you’ll do differently and also what currently works for your industry. It’s a good idea to compile a list of marketing that’s working and also not working so that you can easily compare them. This will help you figure out why certain design isn’t working for an audience so that you can steer clear from it.
Design for your customers, not for yourself
It’s important to keep your personal design likes out of the equation. If you love the colour blue, but your audience associates with orange, then using orange will be more beneficial for your marketing efforts. It’s easy to get caught up in what your personal design aesthetic is, but after researching your target market and finding out what design works for them, it’s important to stick to that.
Trial and Error
Sometimes you’ll need to try some different ideas to see whether they work. Creativity is important when thinking about your marketing, and this sometimes means taking risks in order to find out what works. This step is linked with research as well. If there’s something that other’s haven’t tried, then perhaps you’re leading the market. It might be a flop, but keep a record of that and work out exactly why it didn’t work for your target audience.
Knowing your customers interests
Understanding your customer and what their interests are is an important part of finding out the best way to market toward them.
Keeping up with new trends
Keeping up with the latest trends can help you stay in focus for your target audience. It’s important to have your own style and remain consistent to your brand, but working out ways to incorporate new creative ideas is also important. That’s where a graphic designer can be helpful. Their job is to be creative whilst thinking of creative ways you can present yourself to your audience.
Remain consistent to your brand
We’ve explained the importance of brand and design consistency in this blog post. Consistency is key when building trust with your audience, so make sure you’re not taking risks you’ll regret.
Focus on the important points
It’s important to put your best foot forward. Don’t try and show everything on one poster, focus on one message. This will not only be more striking for your target audience, but will also give a clear message and avoid confusion. If you have multiple messages going at one time, people will soon overlook your marketing efforts. In today’s society, posters, flyers and other creative material are bombarding us. We can only take notice of so much before we will begin to ignore it all. Make your marketing stand out by being punchy and clean.
These are just some points to get you thinking in the right direction. Talk to us today to find out more about how you can direct your marketing efforts toward your target audience and start getting noticed.