Running a food business takes a lot of testing and learning to dial in to the right product for the right customer at the right price point. It’s tempting to think of everyone as your potential consumer, especially early on when you’re looking for sales from anywhere you can find them.
While you will likely welcome anyone as your consumer who wants to buy your products, there is a big difference between welcoming a consumer and creating your product, pricing strategy, packaging, promotion, etc. for your ideal consumer.
Without a strategy for who you are working to attract and how you’re fulfilling their needs, it’s nearly impossible to differentiate yourself in the marketplace.
It might sound counterintuitive, but the best thing to do is narrow down your audience. You created your food brand to fulfill a need, and it is important to remember people are diverse and not everyone has the same needs.
In this episode, host Katie Mleziva lays out the steps to identifying your target customer and strategies for focusing your marketing efforts. This includes ways to validate your assumptions about your target audience, key questions to help you hone your persona, and practical ways this will help you find success in your marketing.
By taking a step back and identifying whose needs your product meets and what your ideal audience looks like, you can focus your product development, messaging, distribution efforts, recipe and usage ideas, etc. to those who are within what Katie explains as the center of a concentric circle. With this strategy in mind, you can stop wasting efforts trying to attract and engage consumers who have no interest in what you offer.
Katie recently wrote a blog about this topic as well. Click here to get all the details on defining your ideal audience and personas.
In This Episode:
- Where to begin when defining your target audience
- Why you should not model your ideal customer only after yourself
- How to validate your ideas and assumptions about your audience
- Questions to answer when building your audience persona
- How to identify your customer’s pain points and needs
- How using your audience persona can guide your decisions
Quotes:
“I have seen the greatness of brands who have a clear brand strategy and know who they are in business to serve.” — @RealFoodBrands
“Every sale is a person who is parting with their hard-earned cash because they are interested in what we are providing.” — @RealFoodBrands
“Sometimes you have to get small to go big.” — @RealFoodBrands
Resources:
