Module 1, Step 1:
Defining Your Audiences
.NOTE *** Best Brand Blueprint is dedicated to helping the small, lean business get found online and convert more of those prospects into customers. As such, we take the Lean Business Model and refine and implement it. Please make sure you’ve done this initial FREE exercise before continuing ***
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Defining your target audiences is a little like holding a big handful of Slime (circa 1976) — you can keep a grip on most of it, but some will slide through your fingers. When you initially define your target audience, you want to include everyone that could possibly, even remotely, want your product or service. But, as you get more practical, you’ll want to better define it. In fact, In virtually every industry you’ll have more than one target audience.
With my company, Edwards Communications, I’ve worked with everything from international Fortune 500s to local solo-preneurs. In this regard I could say that any company that needs to impress their audience with some kind of exceptional marketing materials is within my target audience. You may think that I should be able to get more business than I could ever handle by offering my services to 99% of the companies in the world. But, if I offer my Jack-Of-All-Trades design and marketing services to say, The International Marketing Group (IMG-former client), what are the chances that they’re going to return my calls when they have a database full of “sports-based specialized” designers and marketers?
Answer: 0% 
To market to everyone is to market to no one.
But, this is getting ahead of ourselves. We do need to establish a baseline for our target market. If you’re a local auto mechanic, suffice it to say that your target market doesn’t include people under 16 years old. Nor, (typically) people more than 10 miles away, so let’s eliminate those to start.
In this Module, we’re going to loosely define our target audiences (Step 1), then refine them as much as possible (Step 3). In Module 2 we’ll define our best, unique messaging that speaks directly to our audience and solves their problems.
We can have fun with this as it is our initial jumping off point. You may want to refine your target audiences by the end of this module as I believe that you’ll have a better understanding of exactly who you want to (or SHOULD) target… and when.
Example: Landscape company
For instance, if you’re a landscaping company, you may have a completely different audience and demographic from summer to winter. As we better define our messaging to each of them it becomes clearer where we should focus our efforts during particular seasons. Using this landscaper example, they may have two clearly distinctive target audiences:
• Spring thru Fall customers
Service offerings: Full service lawn and garden package • Basic lawn package
• Winter customers
Service offerings: Unlimited snow removal (drive and sidewalks) package • Driveway snow removal by the push.
Your business may not be as easily divisible by the season, but it probably is by city or gender, or by people who utilize your high end offerings vs your budget package.