Know Your Audience
This is the most important thing you can do before you begin the branding process. If you don’t know your audience, then you 
may not know enough about your company to brand or market properly. This is a crucial step in the marketing process. Sometimes you think you know your audience and then it shifts at some point in time. Any company should regularly monitor its audience to ensure they’re always on track with who to market to and who not to.
This could be as simple as color choice, aesthetics, website, interactions, and content. For example, when you work for a clothing company or a fast food chain, you won’t be trying to market to the same demographic (always). For instance, you’d like to market fast food to everyone, whereas clothing can be made for specific types of people. Think Hot Topic or even Nasty Gal. You may be trying to appeal to the masses if you work for a food chain, but Nasty Gal only carries women’s clothing and typically for the age range of 16-35. A limited audience but specific to the brand. However, if you look at the campaigns for Nasty Gal versus the campaigns for fast food restaurants, they are very different and stylized for the company, and target the demographic they are trying to appeal to.
When is it appropriate to use slang and when is it not? If you are a more professional company, like a car company or even a travel agency, you most likely should not use slang compared to a store such as Nasty Gal. An important part of marketing is to use the language that is used by your target market and reference things that will be familiar and resonate well with them. It’s extremely important to know your audience for this reason alone. Not all brands and industries can jump on the viral video or trending word bandwagon, and that is okay. Whatever product or service you sell won’t turn a profit if you have no one to shop at your store.
Here are some sources to find out who your audience might be:
- Analytics
- Check the sales/customers (who is coming and who isn’t)
- Research/Surveys
These are a few methods to use when wanting to find out who your demographic is. Be sure to stay on top of it to figure out which masses you need to appeal to.