Branding Uncovered: Your Ideal Audience

1. Introduction: No matter what type of business you run, you will need to think about your audience and how you attract and communicate with them. There's many words I could use to describe this like your target market, your ideal client, your ideal customer, your followers, your fans, your students, your community. I'm using the term audience as it's a great word for encapsulating all forms that this can take. If we take the time to define who our audience is and who we would like them to be, this sets us up well to get our brand message and personality sorted, so we can communicate to them in the right places and in the right tone. By tone, this takes on all forms from the way we speak, the copy we use on social media, our visual identity, the way we present ourselves, and perhaps even audio and sound design. It also really helps with pricing our products or services so they appeal to the right people. In this class branding uncovered define your audience, we will go through a series of super fun and informative exercises. By the end of this class you will have a clear understanding of your ideal audience and how and where to attract them to your business. You would have written 2-3 ICAs, which is ideal customer avatar that will help you always make sure that your message is on point to the people you would like to attract to your business. This is not a rigid set of rules. You might not be dealing with your ideal audience 100 percent the time. But having a framework as a base will make all the other aspects of branding much easier because you'll understand who you're talking to, how to attract them, when and where to reach out to them, and why? Why are they right for your business and why are you write for them? Remember, for every business, your customers and clients are the most important part, without them there is no business. Let's spend some time really working out who they are. My name is Faye Brown and I'm a branding designer and brand specialist from the UK. This class is part of the new series of classes where I will look at aspect of the branding process in depth. Branding can be a word that scares some people. I'm hoping for these classes, I can help demystify the world of branding and make it fun and easy to understand. 2. What We Will Cover: No matter what type of business you run, you will need to think about your audience and how you attract and communicate with them. There's many words I could use to describe this like your target market, your ideal client, your ideal your customer, your followers, your fans, your students, your community. I'm using the term audience as it's a great word for encapsulating all forms that this can take. If we take the time to define who our audience is and who we would like them to be, this sets us up well to get our brand message and personality sorted, so we can communicate to them in the right places and in the right tone. By tone, this takes on all forms from the way we speak, the copy we use on social media, our visual identity, the way we present ourselves, and perhaps even audio and sound design. It also really helps with pricing our products or services so they appeal to the right people. In this class, Branding Uncovered; define your audience, we will go through a series of super fun and informative exercises. By the end of this class, you will have a clear understanding of your ideal audience and how and where to attract them to your business. You will have written 2-3 ICAs, which is an Ideal Customer Avatar, that will help you always make sure that your message is on-point to the people you would like to attract to your business. This is not a rigid set of rules. You might not be dealing with your ideal audience 100 percent of the time, but having a framework as a base will make all the other aspects of branding much easier because you'll understand who you are talking to, how to attract them, when and where to reach out to them, and why. Why are they right for your business and why are you right for them. Remember that every business, your customers and clients are the most important part. Without them, there is no business. Let's spend some time really working out who they are. My name is Faye Brown and I'm a branding designer and brand specialist from the UK. This class is part of a new series of classes where I will look at an aspect of the branding process in depth. Branding can be a word that scares some people, so I'm hoping through these classes, I can help demystify the word branding and make it fun and easy to understand. 3. Why Is It Important To Have An Ideal Customer?: Why do we need an ideal customer? You might be thinking, why can't we just appeal to everyone? If you try to appeal to everyone, it's going to be really hard to actually make strong connections with people, you'll become what's known as a vanilla brand. Vanilla doesn't offend anybody, but at the same time, how many people say, "Oh my gosh, Have you tried that new vanilla flavor ice cream?" Vanilla doesn't make people excited or shouting for more, or telling their mates that they must try this amazing new vanilla flavor. One of my favorite quotes that sums this up quite nicely is, if your brand is acceptable to everyone, it won't be interesting to anyone. What you want is a loyal audience who will keep coming back for your services or buying your products over and over, or coming into your coffee shop because they love the vibe so much. Then they tell their friends and colleagues about you and word spreads. Let's think about Apple fans. My husband loves Apple and if he can afford it he'll get every new gadget going. He rarely looks at other brands. He generally knows that Apple products look great, they have good customer service, they all integrate with each other and feel part of the Apple family. There are other products out there that do an equally good job technically if not better, but my husband buys into the brand values of Apple and he's a loyal customer. This might be the same with you always going to the same coffee shop, the same supermarket, buying the same brand trainers, or even the music you listen to. Let's start with a simple exercise. Think about the places brands, the food you buy, the music you like, and write down some notes on what you like about these things. What makes you always go back to a particular beach or a park or restaurant, or listening to the same band religiously. Don't overthink this, just do a little bit of free writing and see what comes up for you. You can download the workbook accompanying this class, where you will see some prompts, you don't have to write about each prompt, maybe just take three or four that you feel resonate with you. For me, we have a favorite beach bound hour away from us called Henkel's Bree head. What I liked about this beach is how big it is. It never feels too crowded and I like space. You have to walk or ride bikes from the car park and the walk is quite long, free some marshlands and woods, it feels like we are going on a little adventure to get to this secret beach. There are some pretty beach huts or with their individual twist running along the shore, and then there's this little central point where food stores and open-air tables are, a pizza place, a bar on ice cream place, it's got such a chilled out, but also a little buzzy vibe to it. It also makes me feel like I'm in another country and I always feel refreshed after a visit there. This beach is not a brand, so to speak, but I can now look at my reasons for loving it so much and think about how that relates to my personal brand. What similarities are there and what qualities might the people that hang out at this beach have that relate to my brand audience. For me, I want my audience to feel inspired or enlightened after working with me or taken a class, I want them to feel a buzz about taking the next step. This beach makes me feel like that. It's also got a bit of a sense of venture with the journey to the beach. I like my audience to feel like they are taking a journey with me to reach their goal, the beach huts are all individual and it's really important to me that my audience feel I've given them a personal touch and not a one stop shop designing the same logos for everyone. The food area is like a little party place where everyone comes together and meets, and I really like meeting my clients, networking, et cetera. You can do this exercise with your favorite brand and you'll probably find it easier than thinking of a place but give it a go with a favorite place too and see what insights you gain from that. Don't worry if it is at this stage, you can't really make sense of your notes we will be doing lots of other exercises that are a bit more focused. Then another little exercise to do would be to pick two to three brands and do some research into how they speak to their audience. Whether it's a TV commercial, a billboard, a social media post, or on their packaging. What's their tone of voice? They chatty, friendly or serious and authoritative. How does the visual elements of the brand make you feel? Is it fun and colorful, rustic and warm, cool and calm, think about how the visuals and the tone of the voice work together and then think about who these brands are trying to attract. Maybe it's a certain gender and age, or it might be much more to do with personality traits, adventure lovers, animal lovers or foodies, et cetera. I'm not going to put thoughts into your mind and I don't want to sway you but I'm going to flip through a series of adverts now, and just think about who they might be appealing to. Trust your first instincts too. First instincts go a long way in branding and that's why it's so important to get it right and make sure you're attracting the right people for your brand. This works on every level. The words we use, the colors, the design, the photography, and depending on the business, our packaging, uniforms, or what we wear, and how we present ourselves. As Seth Godin says," Every interaction in any form is branding." Once we really know our audience, not only will this help with how we brand ourselves, it also helps with marketing. Where might you advertise? How will you narrow down that outreach potential on Facebook? What events will you show up at? This will help with every single part of your business and brand because the customer is central to your business being a success. Let's take a little look at how global brands do that. 4. This Is How They Do It: Let's take a look at three very different companies and what they do to attract their ideal customer. As a design student back in the late '90s, Apple Macintosh computers were the industry standard. I started off with a relatively ugly-looking beige G3 computer that got me through my degree. During my degree, Apple launched the iMac along with the iconic slogan, Think Different, which was possibly their defining moment in terms of setting themselves up to be the innovative brand that pushed the boundaries with their ethos, stylish design, and aesthetic. I'll put a link in the notes below to the Think Different commercial back from 1997. Go ahead and watch it and then pop back over. Pretty amazing. Not only is it inspiring and thought provoking, but it's inviting you in to be a crazy one, a change maker. You can become the innovator by buying Apple and embracing their values. Steve Jobs mentioned in his unveiling of the Think Different campaign that Nike hardly ever spoke about their products in their campaigns. It was more about the feeling, the emotion and you can see that approach being used really effectively in the Think Different campaign. iPods, iBooks, iPads, and iPhones all followed and with it, a loyal customer base that kept buying more and more Apple products. Wonder how many of you have been into an Apple store? Can you think about your customer experience? I've often been in for a Genius appointment and I've always felt that I fully had their attention and they were 100 percent committed to help me with my issue. They would use phrases like, as a valued customer. When they had saw that I regularly bought Apple laptops, they made me feel like I belong to their club. They pride themselves on their customer service. Throughout the store, they have their products fully on display inviting people to play with them. Not like other stores, where you feel like you couldn't touch anything without an alarm going off. Elsewhere in the store, I'd see a training session going on with some young people, not only demonstrating their commitment to education, but openly showing that to everyone who is in the store that day. When I lived in London, I went to music gigs in the Apple store. It felt cool and exclusive, and a great place to just hang out. It felt like an experience. Apple became more than just the products, people bought into the brand. You'll often see people camping out overnight to be one of the first to get their hands on the latest device. Now they really are the crazy ones. But hey, if you want to change the world, they need that latest iPhone or Apple Watch. I find Apple one of the most amazing brands for the impact it has had on people and their buying behavior. Something completely different now let's look at Harley Davidson. Harley Davidson has always been famous for its rugged, masculine, all American bold advertising. But its target market is aging, with its average customer being a male over 55. Their sales are falling and they need to now attract a new kind of customer. They have now trying to target a new age range between 22-38. With that comes its own problems. The millennial group is much more conscious about the environment. Harley Davidson have introduced electric bikes and scooters. If you visit their website, their traditional imagery of the all American rugged white guy is replaced with younger people or genders, and thankfully a lot more diverse. They all still look really cool, but in a much more different way than we'd associate with the old Harley Davidson. This is a tricky step forward for the company, but a good example of how ideal customers sometimes need to and should change and adapt. Your ideal customer might change over time, and that's a natural progression, if you're aiming for a young market now, that young market might grow with your brand. They might have families, get a mortgage, etc. Whilst the people might be the same in 10 years, their lifestyle will change, and your messaging will change with that. Don't get too bogged down with this thought at the moment, but I just want you to use this as an example of how branding can adapt over time. Don't feel that your ideal audience profiles you come up with in this class have to be the same in five-years time. Come back to the class, do the exercises again, and keep pushing forward. Let's look at one more famous brand before we really start talking about you and your brand, Dove. Over the years, Dove has established itself as a very authentic real brand. If we hop over to the website in the opening paragraph, it establishes its message. "Beauty is not defined by shape, size, or color; it's feeling like the best version of yourself. Authentic. Unique. Real. Which is why we've made our site reflect that. Every image you see here features women cast from real life. A real life version of beauty." Their ad campaign celebrates real life women and without a doubt, this is their main ideal customer. As part of the Dove Real Beauty's pledge campaign, they come up with three vows. We will always feature women, never models. We will portray women as they are in real life. We won't digitally distort our images. We will be helping young people build self-esteem and positive body confidence. On the website, you can see more about the Dove Self-esteem Project, helping young people with their self-esteem and body confidence. There's also a section on their website dedicated to men. Whilst their primary advertising and message is skewed heavily towards women of all ages, they do have men's products. This is a good example whilst having a strong ideal audience, you can also appeal to another demographic. It's not about saying you will only work with X, Y or Z. But having a good idea of X, Y, or Z really does help you nail your brand voice and message, which Dove do perfectly. That's just a quick look at three brands. You may have done the challenge earlier to pick a brand yourself to research into. Just keep your eyes open this week for adverts you see on TV, or in magazines, or on billboards who are they attracting? We will now move on to brand personality. 5. Brand Personality: Brand personality, a brief overview. I want to talk really briefly about brand personality as I am planning another class where we go into this in much more detail. You might be at the early stages of launching your business or you might be more established. Your brand personality can develop with your business as it grows. I'm going to talk briefly about brand archetypes and where you'll probably find that you fit into one or a couple. There's some fun quizzes online to find out where you most align to. I'll post in the notes below. Not everyone agrees with this approach to brand personalities, but it can be a good springboard for starting to think about this in more detail. If you have an idea of your personality, it will also help with making sure you target the right people for your brand. If your brand personality clashes with that of your ideal audience, this will cause an obvious imbalance and create friction. Let's briefly look at the 12 archetypes and where you might feel that you most relate. You can be more than one by the way. When I did it, I was mostly the innocent with also elements of the everyman, the caregiver, and the creator. In your workbook, you'll find a sheet called brand personality. As we go through each one, maybe just circle some of the words that really speak to you and relate to your brand personality. When it comes to personality, if you are one non-outfit or the face of your business, your own personality will no doubt have a lot of crossover with your brand personality. But when doing this, try to think about the business first before you. The Innocent: simple, good, childlike, straightforward, pure, honest, useful, optimistic. Good examples would be Dove, Nintendo, and Innocent Drinks. The Explorer: individual, rugged, pioneer, adventurous, risky, exciting, daring. Good examples of brands that fit this personality: The North Face, Jeep, and Lonely Planet. The Sage: expert, knowledgeable, thoughtful, scientific, supportive, wisdom, guiding. If you're thinking of this as a person, Yoda would fit really well into this personality. As for brands, got like Audi, BBC, and Ted. The Hero: impact, competitive, efficient, high performer, motivating, inspiring, brave. Good examples are Nike, Adidas, and FedEx. The Outlaw: revolutionary, disruptive, rebellious, non-conformist, wild. We spoke about Harley Davidson. They fit in well to this and also Virgin and Diesel. The magician: transformation, creative, spiritual, big ideas, mystical, informed. Brands that fit into this personality could be Disney, Tesla, and Dyson. The Everyman: welcoming, down to Earth, supportive, faithful, empathetic, democratic, relatable, and friendly. We've got Gap, Home, Depo, and IKEA as good examples for the everyman brand. The Lover: romantic, intimate, elegant, loving, passionate, and sensual. A lot of fashion brands fit into the love of personality, so we've got Chanel and Versace, but also Ferrari can fit into this personality. The Jester: fun and fun-loving, humble, humorous, mischievous, playful, and optimistic. M&Ms, Carlsberg, and Nando's are good examples of brands that can fit into the jester personality. The Caregiver: supportive, nurturing, caring, compassionate, generous, selfless, protective, and warm. We've got Pampers, UNICEF, and the World Wildlife Fund. They all fit in to the caregiver well. The creator: expressive, innovative, artistic, creative, inspirational, provocative, and daring. Apple is a really good example and we've also got Lego and Adobe. Then the Ruler: powerful, organized, elite, secure, stable, high-quality, commanding, and refined. Good examples would be Rolex, British Airways, and Mercedes. That's a really quick look at this. There's lots of juicy content online about brand personalities. But like I said, I do plan to do a class on the subject in the future. Hopefully, for now, you have a rough idea of where you might fit within those. Have you circled a lot more words in one than another? You'll notice that there are some words that fit into more than one too. But as we discussed, you can fit into more than one archetype. Just have that ticking over as we move forward with the workshop part of this class. 6. Workshop Intro: Workshop audience profiles. [NOISE] I love the workshop element to these classes. This is where things get really interactive and fun. It's important to do all the work and research before this point, as now you're in a great place to really start digging deep into your ideal client. We will start by taking a detailed look at your business, and what you do or produce is different to others. What's your USP? Actually USP will help you attract the right audience. We will also talk about your brand values briefly before moving on to a variety of exercises to help you hone down your ideal audience profiles. Your workbooks will come in really handy for this section, but equally, don't feel like you have to print out everything. If you want to use a notebook or make notes straight into your computers instead, please do. Just make lots of notes and keep it in a safe place. Let's make a start. 7. Your USP & Brand Values: Your USP and brand values. What you might be thinking," I don't know the answer to this." So let's take a look at these terms in more detail. Your USP, which is your unique selling proposition is what you do differently. What sets you apart from other people offering a similar service or product? This isn't always easy to figure out. Why would people choose your product or service over one of your competitors? If you can tell your audience what that is, it will help you stand out in the market. You might have a product that is completely groundbreaking and never been seen before. In which case, it's pretty easy to tell people how amazing and different you are. Sometimes it might not be directly linked to your product or service, but something you stand for; a belief, a cause, a promise. If it's a promise, you have to make sure that you can fulfill that promise constantly. [LAUGHTER] If you don't know what your USP is, then take some time to think about what your customer really wants from you. What will make them loyal or recommend you to others? What do you want to be known for? In terms of my teaching, I'd like to be known for authentic, down to earth advice that inspires people. A similar teacher might want to be known for straight talking, high energy classes that make people laugh. So lots of people can make people laugh but a combination of the three values, will set them apart from others. Some people will like their approach and others won't. That's totally cool. Remember you don't want to appeal to everyone. If you don't have that one distinct USP, think about what combination of your offering, values or personality makes you different from the rest. You might not work this out in five minutes. It might need some work and don't worry, there's a page in your workbook with a few prompts. But for now I just want you to be aware of your USP or potential USP when we go through the next exercises. Also, let's briefly touch on core brand values. This needs a whole class on its own too, but I'll try to keep it short for the purposes of this particular class. Your core brand values are essentially a set of beliefs that the company stand for, that will guide you in terms of your choices and actions that you make. A simple way to start with this and a good quick exercise for now is to come up with 5-10 sentences saying what you believe in. There's a page in your workbook to make some initial notes on this. So just write down whatever comes to mind, even if it seems unrelated to what you do. You can come back another time to hang this down, but having a clear idea of your beliefs will help you guide the right audience to you. Let's take a look at an example of McDonald's. Their five brand values are; Serve: We put our customers and people first. Inclusion: We open our doors to everyone. Integrity: We do the right thing. Community: We are good neighbors. Family: We get better together. Notice the values don't actually say anything about food. It's more about the beliefs they have. They believe their customer comes first, everyone is welcome, they do the right thing. They try to be good neighbors and always leave room for improvement. Have a little think about your potential brand values as this might help with targeting audience too. Maybe by doing this exercise, you'll realize that you don't want a certain type of customer or client whose beliefs are too far away from yours, for example. You can weave your brand values into your communications, into your social posts, etc to attract the people you want to your business. It's also a useful checklist. When posting out a newsletter or an Instagram post, you can come back to your values and make sure it takes off one or two and the message is relevant to your brand message. 8. Demographics, Geographics & Psychographics: Some of the prompts are really straightforward. Others, you might get a little stuck with. Some of you might not find relevant at all. Let's just talk a little bit about each one. Age. Putting in an age range might help you think about where to advertise or how to promote your business. You might not want to define your audience by age, so leave this field blank or really wide like 18-80. Maybe you can use that as part of your marketing. Gender. Some of your businesses might appeal to one gender more than the other, or you might decide to do one customer profile based on a female and one based on a male like me. Equally, you might want to appeal to a non-gender specific market. Job role. It's sometimes useful to think about what kind of jobs your potential clients or customers have and their income. Thinking about how much income they have coming into a household might help you position yourself within the market. Are you budget-friendly, middle-of-the-road, or high-end? Where do they live? Is your business online, and you want to appeal to a global reach? Then keep this non-specific. But maybe it's city dwellers you want to attract more, maybe right about a generic city. If your business is very much based in the local vicinity, you'll want to keep this closer to home and be more specific. Education. You might want to think about the level of education, depending on your product or service. Relationship status. If you work in an industry that maybe relates to weddings or families, or maybe you're setting up a dating service, this could be an important question to consider. But equally, it's also something to consider with how you relate to your potential clients. Good percentage of my clients happened to be moms around the same age as me. I don't specifically aim for moms, but once I know they have kids of the same age, I know that there will be your understanding with school holidays and poorly children, etc. Children. This will be relevant to some of your businesses, others not. The child's age might also be important, so take that into consideration. Pets. Maybe you have a product aimed at the animal kind. This would be important. Maybe you are also trying to relate to outdoorsy people who are quite likely to have a dog as a bit of a generalization. Leisure activities and interests. What do they like to do? Where do they like to hang out? If you are local, this will help you think about where to leave potential flyers. Equally, it's just a good thing to talk about. Do they hang out at a cafe on the beach? They're beach lovers. Can you weave that into your marketing, for example? Are they really into fitness? Maybe this doesn't directly relate to what you do, but can you start talking about shared interests on social media? Let's say, I go to a lovely yoga class. I could share that on my Instagram stories, for example, and say, "Feeling refreshed and ready for a week of designing logos after my yoga class." It's relating it back to what I do plus also giving people an insight into my lifestyle, helping them to get to know me better. You're probably familiar with the term know, like, and trust. This is so important for our businesses. These days, people really want to get to know the person behind the brand. Magazines, books, blogs, websites. This is not only useful to think about the type of person you're aiming your product at, but also potential places to advertise or get a feature. You can do a similar Instagram story with a magazine and shot, "Taken 10 minutes out to read my favorite magazine," for example. Music. In one of my Bitesize classes, I set the challenge to come up with a playlist for your perfect client. Then listen to it when you're working on your business or your communications. It might help you get in the zone. If it's high-end wedding business. Listening to classical, instrumental music might just help you get into that right vibe. If you think your audience might be really into rock music, you can start asking them questions on Instagram about their favorite gigs, etc. Just to get a little bit of interaction going. Social media. What social media platforms are your target market likely to use? We are faced with a lot of social media options these days. Where do you think your audience will mostly hang out? I tend to use Instagram and Facebook most. I know that I could also do a lot on LinkedIn and Pinterest, but half the problem is finding the time. Figure out the top two places your audience are most likely to be using most regularly, and focus on them to start. If you have the time, obviously branch out to others too. Think about how your audience likes to digest information. Is it visually? Maybe it's audibly. Maybe look at clubhouse. Consider how best to reach them. Personality traits. We spoke about your brand personality earlier. Also, just think about what personality your customer is likely to have. It's probably going to be similar in some ways. I've included a whole page of personality traits, if you find this one a bit hard to answer. Go through and circle 5-10. Try not to circle all of them. Beliefs. This isn't just religious. But like we spoke previously about with the brand values, I believe each child should have a fair education, for example. What strong beliefs might your ideal customer have? Maybe it's something more environmental or something to do with culture. Any other thoughts? Have we missed something? Is there anything else that's really important to consider for you at this point? Maybe it's a health issue that is relevant to your business. Just think about all these things, and write about other factors in here that are important to your business. Once you've done this, go through it, and highlight any words or phrases that are really speaking to you. Maybe there's some words that keep popping up. Then we will come back to this after we've done the other exercises. Next, we're going to take your customer above out on a dinner date and really get to know them a little bit better. 9. Dinner Date: Dinner date. If you already have an existing client or friend who pretty much fit your ideal customer perfectly, then this would be a great exercise to do for real take them out. However if that's not the case, you'll have to use your imagination a little more and visualize taking the person you've just described above out for dinner whereas the exercise above is a bit more of an overview of the person. In this exercise you'll be getting to know them on a deeper level, getting under the skin so to speak. What makes them tick? What are their pain points? What do you chat about? Number 1, where will you take them? Think about where you will go for dinner and how this relates to your offering, is it a quick McDonald's or a posh sit-down meal at a high-end restaurant, or maybe you go to the pub, or a pizza place for a nice relaxed vibe. Where do you and your customer feel happiest and most at ease? Number 2, what do you have to drink? Think about this in terms of how do you want your customers to feel. Maybe you're having a nice warm, cozy hot chocolate in front of a fire, maybe you're having a smoothie in a gym cafe, maybe you are drinking the finest Champagne although I generally prefer white wine over beer. For this exercise I would suggest my customer and I enjoy a nice cold beer. This gives off a chilled out vibe, relaxed, friendly, and that's how I liked my clients to feel. Try to think a little bit outside the box with these exercises. Three, what do you talk about? You've chatted about your product or service, told them everything there is to know. Where does the conversation naturally flow to next? What do you have in common? Thinking about this in this way will help you come up with ideas for communicating to your audience on social media for example. What will get people interacting? Number 4, what are their goals? For any client or customer you want to know their goal and how your product or service will help them achieve this. Maybe their goal is to feel completely relaxed in the evenings after a stressful day, so your amazingly candles will help them with that or maybe it's much more focused. They need a new website to attract their right customers and you will design that website for them. What does that website need to achieve? Five, what are their pain points? On the flip side to this, let's think about their pain points. What is holding them back from achieving their goals? Maybe it's time, money, knowledge, and experience, marketing. How can your business help with that pain point? Is it product-based? Maybe your customer is finding it hard to find eco-friendly baby clothes that don't cost fortune, and hey you are about to help them with that. Think about what you offer and what problem you are solving for your audience. Six, when is the next date? You might think this sounds a bit of a strange question, but depending on your business think about repeat business. Are your clients or customers likely to come back to you to buy more products or to use your services again. As a branding designer I'll often get people asking me to help them with some other design elements for example but quite often I don't get a next date for a long time. However, what I do get is a lot of word of mouth business and recommendations. Even if my client doesn't come back to me, they will often refer me on to friends and colleagues. Maybe your business is similar. Always think about what lasting impression you have on someone even if they don't personally come back to you. Remember the famous quote, "Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room." You want people to talk about you in the right way. Once again, just look for the notes you've made for this exercise and start highlighting any words that really stand out for you and all phrases that really speak to you. 10. Vision Boards: Have you all heard about vision boards? It's a great exercise where you vision things you would like to happen in your life with maybe a 1-2 year time frame and then keep your vision board visible for you to see it every day. You'll be amazed how many of these things might happen. I did one a few years ago, and I put a picture of Dubai on it as I really wanted a family holiday there, and six months later, we actually did make it to Dubai. We are going to use the same principles around your audience. You're going to visualize your ideal client or customer. You've already done a lot of work with the two exercises, but some people respond to visuals more and really picturing this person can help you talk to them in the right way. It can also help you spot this person in real life and invite them into your business. Here's two vision boards that I've put together for two quite different customers for different brands. The first one is for a new juice drink. They want to attract a young audience, mostly females who are adventurous, fun-loving, have conscious, easygoing, who values friendship, travel, and eating well. Just by collating a few images, I start to get an idea of some colors that I might use as brand palette. This is a whole other area, and I have another class on brand color palettes. Once you've really defined your audience, this would be a really good class to take to help you with the next step of visual branding. I've also got, in the top corner, a magazine that she likes to read. Including this imagery on a vision board might help you think where to advertise or get a feature. Adding inspirational quotes are quite good for a vision board. Also, I've got this little image in the corner of a girl on a mobile phone as she loves Instagram. Printing this mood board out and hanging it somewhere will help you easily and quickly check in with your ideal audience. When you're working on your brand, you can glance up and think, will a social media post attract my ideal customer? Am I talking to her in the right way? Will the visuals appeal to her? If you want, you could also add some key onto the mood, onto this vision board, maybe her personality or some of your brand values could come in here too. As a contrast, let's look at a board for a new sports brand. We see this stylish guy. Let's give him a name, Adam, so we can really get to know him. Adam is a live hard and fast guy. He burns the candles at both ends, gets up early to go to the gym, and likes to go to nightclubs at weekend and party. He has high standards, only the best will do. He has a very expensive motorbike and lives in the city. We know he has a disposable income and can afford to pay above the average. The quote gives us a little insight into his personality. He's a go-getter, quite serious, and really into his image. Other ways to do this is using magazines, cutting imagery out and creating a much more tactile board. Or you can simply create a board in Pinterest. Here's a board I made for a wedding photographer who wants to attract a high-end client with a big budget for photography on their big day. This isn't focusing so much on one person, but more of an overall feel; high-end wedding dresses, styles of photography, magazines they might read, even a style of invitation they might send out. Creating a mood board like this will also help you when it comes to the visual element of your branding. Either when you design your own logo or brief designer, they will want to know who you are aiming your services or products at. This is a big part of my design process. I make sure that I know my client's ideal customer inside out. I want to make sure that whatever logo I design or color palette I create, it will appeal to that persona. Do whatever comes naturally to you for this exercise, whether you really focus down on one customer or create more of an overall feel. This might depend on what your business is, as to what suits you best. Please do share your boards in the project gallery along with a little paragraph about how you found this exercise. Also write down any words or feelings that have come up doing this exercise in your workbook. Shortly, we will be collecting all these keywords to help write your customer persona paragraphs. 11. Visualisation: Our final exercise is going to be a visualization. We are going to take a few minutes, in a comfortable place, you will close your eyes, and I will walk you through a little journey of your future business. Try to do this at a time where you won't be disturbed and can enjoy the visualization. Try to go with the flow here. Don't overthink it as we move through it, but just see what naturally pops up and if anything surprises you. Get yourselves into a comfortable position, whether that's sitting up or lying down, make sure you are warm with no distractions. Turn your phone to silent. When you are ready, let your eyes close and take in some deep breaths. Breathe in for one, two, three, four, and out for one, two, three, four. In for one, two, three, four and out for one, two, three, four. This time, imagine breathing in creativity and contentment and breathing out tension and anxiety. Couple more breaths like this. Let your muscles relax and your thoughts turn to the feelings within your body. Breathe out any areas that feel tense. Take a body check starting with toes. Wriggle out any aches. As you breathe in, feel the breath travel up your legs and relax your muscles. As you move up to your belly, be aware of the rise and fall of your breath. Relax your arms, hands, and fingers. Release your shoulders and shrug out any tension. As you move to your face, relax your jaw, let your eyes feel light, and your thoughts fade into complete relaxation and stillness. Take a moment to take one more deep breath in, one, two, three, four and out one, two, three, four. Now, start to imagine your future life one year from now. You might be surrounded by loved ones and pets. Now move into your dream workspace. You are getting ready for a day of working on your business, your brand, and your impact on the world. Think about where you are. Are you outside or indoors? What sounds can you hear? What can you smell? How are you feeling? Are you with other people or on your own? Is this area large or intimate? What colors can you see? What items surround you? If you have other people with you, who are they? What is their energy like? What do they say about working with you? What is your role in the business in relation to them? If you work on your own or with others, think about your customer or clients. How often do you see them? What's their personality like? What do they say about your business and you? Take a few moments to think about everything and everyone that surrounds you in this space. If you're indoors, what can you see outside the window? Are you in a busy city, a forest, near water, or somewhere else? How did you travel to work? We're now going to skip further in time to five years from now. If your business was a new business, it will now be more established. How have things changed in that five-years? What successes have you had? Have you won awards or been featured in a magazine? What have you celebrated over the last five years? Are you still in the same location or have you moved now? Have you developed any new products or offerings in this time period? Take a walk around your working environment. What can you touch? What can you smell? What makes you feel happy or proud? Maybe you have some prints or artwork on the wall. What do they look like? Is music playing? What sought of music? Do you have people around you? What are you talking about with them? Take some time to breathe in everything you can see and the sounds you can hear. It's now time to say see you later to anyone you are working with or your customer or clients. Hold onto this vision of the future as we start to come back to present day. You know you can always return to this space. In a few moments, we'll come back feeling renewed, excited about the future vision and holding onto any key words to describe the journey we've taken. We will count down three to one. Three. Start bringing your thoughts back to the now. Two. Wiggle your fingers and toes and get some gentle movement into your body. One. Open your eyes feeling inspired and awake. How are you feeling after that? Take a few moments to come back to this class. Hold on to your thoughts about your customers or clients that you met in your visualization. When you're ready, jot down notes in your workbook, or your own notebooks, about what showed up for you. Whilst we're focusing on your ideal audience in this class, maybe some other things relevant to your business came to light. So just write down anything you need to at this point. In the next lesson, we will be collating all our thoughts and notes for each exercise to help you come up with your ICA, an ideal customer avatar. Also, go and grab a drink if you need one after that visualization. 12. Next Steps: You should now have a really clear picture of your ideal audience. In the final page of your workbook you will see a template and you can use this to and fill in or use it as a guide to make your own. This is where you will bring all your findings together to create a couple of ideal audience personas. Remember, if you already have a perfect customer or client and use them if you want to, or use them as a base to start with. Print this page out two or three times if you need to. Adding a picture can help you connect with this person and put a face to them. Remember, when filling these out, always think about how and what you are offering can help your audience. Also, keep coming back to this maybe once a year and see if your ideal audience has changed slightly. Take some time on this and don't rush it. Start by giving them a name. You can see my example here and a short bio to give a bit of a background into them as a person and what they do. The general points as enlisted below the place for their picture, these are some of the general things we went through earlier. Also, their sources of information. Remember, this is where you might want to show up for them. Where do you advertise, where will you focus your attention on social media et cetera. By going through these exercises in this class you should have a good idea of their personalities, so write a little paragraph or some keywords in this box, same with their values, my clients tend to be very family orientated as they are a certain age with young kids., so for them, family is a big part of their lives. Then let's think about their goals. What do they want to achieve and be specific with this and working out how you can help them. A lot of my clients leave full-time jobs to set up for themselves. Their goal may be to have a successful business that they can be flexible around with a young family. My role in this is helping them come up with great branding that will attract the right audience for them. Their frustrations are that they lack time, so I know I need to make the process as easy as possible for them, and walk them through the branding journey. For someone else their frustrations might be that they lack technical knowledge and you're going to help them build a WordPress website with a guide to help them update it for themselves as an example. Working out your ideal audiences helps position you in a place to help them. It will help you write content that helps inform or inspire them to reach their goals. Once you've completed this please post up your profiles in the project gallery along with a little bit of a background to your business, keep these profiles in view when you are working on your business especially when creating content. Keep looking up and checking in with them. Are you speaking to your ideal audience? Are they at the forefront of your mind when you're writing a newsletter or creating a lovely graphic for Instagram. I can't wait to see your results from this class. Thank you for taking this class, keep an eye out for more classes in this series. Do check out the power of the perfect palettes, as now you have a clear understanding of your audience so you can see how your brand colors can attract the right people to you as well. Don't forget to post up your profiles in the project gallery and ask for feedback. If you're a bit stuck, you can join my dedicated SkillShare Student Facebook group I'll paste the link below in the notes and do reach out if there is anything that I can help with that. I hope you found this class useful and hope to see you in another class again soon.