Peter Veash, The BIO Agency

Once a brand has been established, often the natural next stage in its life cycle is to evolve and expand its target market.

This approach can increase brand awareness across a range of consumers in what can often be an over-crowded and cluttered market.

It can also increase profitability and the longevity of your product if implemented as a strategic component of your marketing communications.

Here Peter Veash, MD at digital outfit, The BIO Agency give us his five insights on what marketers should spend a second thought on before addressing a new audience.
 

1. Don’t be afraid of change.  If you are a brand that is known for producing a masculine product but want to reach out to a new female audience, then create a campaign that is new and different when targeting women. Marketers need to create cut-through and stand-out when targeting a new audience to ensure that the message will be effectively received.  Be brave, nobody remembers a vanilla or vague campaign. It’s those brands who do something unexpected that can create the most noise.
 
2.  Engage.  Don’t just put an advertisement on the TV, you need to be in the audiences’ space. These days spending a chunk of your budget on getting the brand name out there is not enough. Use customer insight to get close to those you are targeting. Hang out in the consumer’s space even if it feels a bit uncomfortable. If you are trying to speak with lads then you might need to relate your brand to football. It can take many times for engagement to soak in, so a little and often approach when it comes to communication can work wonders.
 
3.  Partner with like minded brands.  This will help you to be adopted by association, as you mix with a similar audience. Cherry-pick the right brand to partner with – the demographic has to fit your target audience or you are at risk of clouding your message. This will also open up opportunities to share customer data to help with prospecting.
 
4.  Be prepared.  At the risk of sounding like Baden-Powell, it is vital to be prepared. From a digital perspective if you are beginning to engage with a digital audience it is important to be prepared to respond if they don’t like what you are doing. New technology means that consumers want an immediate reply so whilst you might think you are faultless, they will be quick to inform you when they don’t think you are. Equally, you need to be ready to adapt and evolve at a quick pace to keep up with the continual emerging technology trends.
 
5.  Target influencers.  Look at the type of people you are trying to contact and work at building relationships with the head of groups of these interest areas. These connections will informally allow you to create noise and buzz around your product or message.  When contacting consumers in their own space it is far more powerful for them to be reached by another influencer than a business.

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