In the past few blog posts, we went over what we do here at Nymbl and how we use print-on-demand (POD) technology to get customers cool and unique designs on a seemingly endless number of products and product types. If you missed those post, you can find them here.
Today, we are going to talk about the next step in the process of selling the cool items with the designs that you come up with – finding the right people to sell them to and how to make the products best fit those audiences. This also lays the groundwork to a great marketing plan and will get you off on the right foot when it comes to marketing and selling your brand to the people who really love it. We will get to that in later blog posts.
If you have an business that has been around for a little while, you likely already have a pretty good idea of who your audience is. By that I mean that you already know the demographics of the people who are interested in what you offer and participate in the purchasing of your product or service. For example, if you run a nail salon, your audience most likely skews towards women. If you are just launching a brand or a business, this is something that is vitally important as you begin. Knowing what you stand for as a brand and who you are targeting to sell to is a necessity.
There are a few ways you can determine your target customer. First, you should know generally what demographics your products or services are more geared towards. Some products are more geared towards men or women, younger or older folks, higher income or people more on a budget. Now, not all or any of these may apply, but you probably have a gut feeling which do. From there, you need to look more into the psychographics of the folks that would be the most interested in your product or service. This means more of what your demographics are thinking about. What do they hold as far as values? What are they interested in? This might mean they like messages of positivity or maybe more humorous or possibly into music. This is where you really need to try and understand which “type” of person you are targeting. Again, it certainly could be many “types” and not just one.
Once you have your target markets down, you can really start tailoring your products to that group of people. If one of you target markets is art lovers, you know what type of products and what type of designs pair well with people who like art. Keep in mind, that this may take some trial and error since it’s not always a guarantee that a product or design that has a certain market in mind will be successful with that particular group of people. At this point you need to rely a lot on customer feedback and sales to determine if your product has resonated with your target group or not. This also helps provide valuable marketing data that you can use later when it comes to advertising and expanding your business.
Finding your audience will be an evolution, there will most likely be some target markets that seem obvious and easy to reach, where others might be more difficult to nail down. You will likely also find that you have some niche groups of people that you are popular with as well. Just ask the bronies (young adult men who are super into My Little Pony). It’s a real thing that I doubt anyone saw coming. You will have to adapt to the changing audience that you find yourself in, but with companies like Nymbl, you can quickly change your products to match up with those audiences.
If you need assistance with finding your target audience or finding the right designers and product to fit with a desired audience feel free to contact us!
