As a fashion brand owner, you start of with the goal of owning the most successful collection or fashion brand and while it seems to be achievable, not all brand owners accomplish this goal. One foundational element that is critical to the growth of a successful business is recognizing who you are making the products for.
To understand who your products made for, it is important to carry out customer research. This allows you to develop your brand to fit the intended audience. Determining your target audience is a key element for any fashion brand because it allows you to decide and show the world what your brand is all about and what type of customers you want to attract. Targeted strategies take you from a good brand to a successful brand and this post discusses the steps to take to reach your target audience and how this supports effective marketing for your fashion business.
Before identifying your target audience, it is important to know what your brand identity is; this allows you to understand the advantages of your product and how useful it will be to your intended audience. Furthermore, it helps you to know what value your products add to people who use it, as this will eventually promote brand loyalty with your customers and incoming buyers.
To begin your customer research, gather information on the following points:
- identify what need your fashion products meet and what problem you are solving.
- create a customer profile (a detailed description of your ideal customer on paper.)
- decide on who your brand is for, Men, Women, Children?
- decide on the affordability of your products and the income level of your target audience
- what age group will you focus on.
- where does your target audience live? (weather/seasons)
- find out what makes your intended customers happy or what they expect from you. (understand the garment problems that people face.)
- consumer demographics can aid the search for your target audience(social media strategies and website analytics)
- extend marketing techniques to multi-segmented marketing.(engage in social media, digital marketing, blogs, PR etc. Make use marketing platforms to reach out to your audience.)
As you apply the above points, you start to identify factors that will help to build your business appropriately and attract the right audience. These steps will ease the process of developing an effective marketing plan for your business; as the goal is to know who your customers are and how to satisfy their needs.
Additionally, your search for what makes your customers happy never ends because fashion trends change, so your relevance in the market and among your competitors rely solely on the information you receive from your customers, fashion trends or commercial updates. As you effectively interact with your audience, you develop customer loyalty and increased level of referrals. This is what keeps the business afloat and profitable.