When crafting a brand, it is important to represent the company’s core values while also visually communicating to its ideal audience. It is a practice of looking both inward and outward. To effectively communicate to a specific audience, we must understand them — what they value and what drives them to purchase.

When you work with us, we dedicate multiple questions within our initial questionnaire to getting to know who exactly your target audience is. This is arguably the most important part of our project process because it helps us unlock the foundation your brand visuals will be built on. Brand visuals are most successful when they represent the places your ideal audience and your business’s core values overlap. Oftentimes, our clients have little issue telling us about their business’s core values. However, when it comes to telling us about their ideal audience, they run into confusion or lack of clarity.

Before we even think about beginning our design process, we must understand the audience we are speaking to. We need to know who they are to communicate with them efficiently, right? During the discovery phase, we create ideal audience profiles and describe the brand’s ideal audience in detail. The more detailed the ideal audience profile, the easier it is to “speak” to them. When we know who they are and what they enjoy, value, and align with, we can target them more specifically with both visuals and messaging.

When writing an ideal client profile, it’s best to get as specific as possible. While it may seem more intuitive to stay broad to attract a “broad audience”, the more specific you can get in describing your ideal client avatar, the more helpful it will be to your brand. The point of a client avatar or ideal client profile is to describe in detail your most-ideal-dream-client-ever. When you can specifically talk to her, you’ll still be talking to those who parallel her or are similar to her in different ways… but your messaging will seem clear, concise, and succinct rather than vague or generic.

A business may have one ideal audience profile or multiple, depending on its offerings or products. For example, a skin spa may target both a 20-something struggling with acne but also a 50-something struggling with fine lines and wrinkles. In this case, it is important to go in-depth for both client avatars.

Here are some things to consider when building your ideal client profile:

• What is her gender?
• What’s her age?
• Where does she live?
• Why does she live there?
• What is her job? Does she work a career or part-time?
• What is her income?
• What is her family dynamic? Is she in a relationship? Does she have kids?
• Who does she interact with?
• What is her demeanor like?
• What are her hobbies?
• What does she value?
• How does she communicate?
• Does she use social media?
• How does she get her information/news? What side of the aisle is she on politically?
• What challenges does she face?
• What are her goals (short-term and long-term)?
• What is her personality type? (Astrological sign, Myers-Briggs, Ennegram)
• What type of consumer is she? Impuslive? Research-driven?
• What does her day-to-day look like?
• Why would she need your business?
• How would she find your business?
• What about your business appeals to her?

Have you thought about these questions before? As a business owner, you should be considering your target audience often. Having a specific profile makes it more tangible. Instead of thinking, “what does my audience want?”, you can think, “what does Jane want?”

Describe your ideal client or customer below using some of the questions above!