How to Design for Your Target Audience | MP 45

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How to Design for Your Target Audience | MP 45

Why is identifying your target audience crucial to the way you create your design elements? How can putting your personal preferences aside help you engage better with your ideal client? Is a picture really worth a thousand words?

In this podcast episode, Sam Carvalho speaks about how to design for your target audience.

In This Podcast

Summary

  • 10 things to keep in mind

1. Identify your target audience

Great design begins with an understanding of who it’s for. Understanding your customers is a crucial factor for being able to choose the right design elements such as typography, color schemes, layout, and navigation.

In addition to knowing your audience’s demographics (age, gender, location, etc.), you need to discover what makes them tick.

  • Who are they?
  • What drives them?
  • What are their beliefs and values?
  • Which other companies are they buying from?
  • What products do they use?

The more you know about them, the better you can design branding that meets their needs and requirements.

2. Create personas

Now it’s time to step into your client’s shoes. Create personas for each type of client who’ll be engaging with your brand and dream up some real-life scenarios.

Think about what they’ll be looking for when they land on your side, and how easy it is to find that information.

Consider how they’ll find you and what you want them to do when they arrive. Having a clear picture of your marketing goals and your user’s requirements will enable you to design, for example, appropriate website functionality as well as plan a relevant social media content strategy.

3. Check out the competition

It’s common for businesses to be looking over their shoulders or peeking into the yard next door to see what’s happening. By evaluating your competition, you can gain a much clearer picture of where your organization stands.

Look carefully at your competitor’s branding to see what they have in common. You’re not looking to copy them, but rather to see what works and what doesn’t. Look at usability, design, content, layout, and navigation, and optimization. Look for things they do well, but also seek out any weaknesses and opportunities to gain a strategic advantage.

4. Put aside personal preferences

When creating a brand, it’s absolutely essential that you put aside your personal preferences in favor of what works best for the clients.

You may wish to try out the latest cutting-edge trend but remember, what appeals to you may be a total turn-off for the people engaging with it. Stay focused on the client and produce branding that enhances their experience and is a perfect fit for the target audience.

5. Use typography to speak their language

Custom typography is a fantastic way to express brand personality, and there are numerous fonts to choose from, but choose wisely.

For a traditional, corporate feel, Serif fonts do a lovely job, whereas a contemporary, modern feel can be achieved by selecting a Sans-Serif font, which is more streamlined. Kids will enjoy fun, cartoon-style fonts.

Font size also requires consideration. If your audience is likely to include senior citizens or people with sight problems, you need to use a minimum of 12-point fonts and have options to increase the size (on digital mediums) where necessary.

6. Choose appropriate colors

Color can influence people’s moods and emotions, and sway their behavior. So think carefully about the tone you wish to achieve.

You should have a good idea of the type of colors that will appeal to your clients from your initial research. Start by identifying two main colors to work from. This will make it easy for your customers to recognize and remember your brand.

It’s also good practice to look for color combinations that are already working well in your industry.

7. Include enticing images

The old, cliched saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” remains true. Images are processed quicker than words, so they give users an easy route into your content. Therefore, choose images that are relevant and that will pique people’s imagination and curiosity.

Images are a great tool for breaking up text and adding interest to a design, though take care not to include images for the sole purpose of looking pretty – if they have little relevance to your content, your users will be left feeling confused.

8. Think about your content

Another cliched saying that remains true: Content is King. Your design efforts will be in vain if the content is inappropriate or lacking in quality.

Your audience has an effect on the type of content and the style of writing. If the website is for a specific profession, then industry-specific jargon is acceptable, and often necessary. But if it’s for general use, too much jargon will result in people bouncing away in bewilderment.

A friendly, conversational tone is perfect for a health and lifestyle website.

9. Order your information hierarchically

Ordering your information according to visual hierarchy will help your users navigate the content and absorb the information according to their preferences. Take a human-centered approach to design by basing your layout on how your users will expect it to be.

A visual hierarchy gives all elements an order of importance according to how they’re positioned and displayed. The most important thing should be the first thing users lay their eyes on, and it should be the loudest, brightest, and boldest thing on a design.

The second most important thing should be a little smaller and carry less visual weight. And so on.

10. Surprise and delight them

Introduce a fun, quirky, or helpful factor that will surprise and delight your users. This will make them more likely to remember you and become repeat visitors, and it will help your brand personality shine through.

People are more likely to work with companies that make them feel happy and comfortable, so if you can put a smile on their face, you’re more likely to turn them from visitor to a client.

Useful Links:

Meet Sam Carvalho

Samantha Carvalho DesignSam Carvalho is a graphic designer living in Cape Town, South Africa, with over five years of experience in both design and marketing, with a special interest and experience in the start-up environment.

She has been working with Practice of the Practice since 2016 and has helped over 70 therapist entrepreneurs take their practices to the next level by enhancing their visual branding. She loves working with a variety of clients on design-intensive tasks and is always up for a challenge!

Follow Sam on Instagram to see some of her work. To work with Sam, head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding.

Thanks For Listening!

Feel free to leave a comment below or share this podcast on social media by clicking on one of the social media links below! Alternatively, leave a review on iTunes and subscribe!

Podcast Transcription

[SAM]:
Marketing a Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice Podcast Network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic, Imperfect Thriving, or Faith in Practice, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.

Welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast with me, Sam Carvalho, where you will discover everything you need to know about marketing and branding your business. To find out more about how I can help you brand your business, visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram @samanthacarvalhodesign.

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[SAM]:
Hi, there. Thanks so much for joining me today on the Marketing a Practice podcast. Today I’m going to be talking about how to design for a particular target audience. So we know from previous episodes, and I’m sure you know if you’ve been through the process that there’s a lot of theory that goes into setting up a brand. That before you even get to the visual side of things, the colors or the fonts, you are thinking about things like your target audience, right, because ultimately, the point of branding is to get them to come and purchase your service or your product. And so you want to make sure that your branding appeals to them. And so whether you’re thinking of your, whether your product or service is something that’s appealing to them, once you’ve kind of ironed that out, then you move on to thinking okay, cool, what sort of branding is going to appeal to them? So what design is going to ensure that they look a little further into whether or not they want to engage with my service offering. So it is imperative to keep your target audience in mind when creating your branding.

For example, if you go ahead, and you’ve already now created a shiny new cutting edge website, it’s going to be of precious use, if it doesn’t appeal to the people who are going to use it. So again, if you’re focusing just on what is trendy at the moment, and you haven’t given thought to your actual target audience and what they will like, whether you have the trendiest website out there, it’s not going to help if it’s not attracting your ideal client. So therefore, when you’re designing websites, or any of your marketing material or branding, you have to start with the end in mind, you need to figure out who you’re talking to, what they care about, and what they want from you. So that’s what I want to cover today, is how to design for a particular target audience. So whether you are the one doing the designing, or whether you need to communicate to a designer, who your target audience is and what their preferences are, it’s really something that you need to keep top of mind when you’re doing any branding, and design work or creating any marketing materials.

So first and foremost, you want to identify your target audience. Great design begins with an understanding of who it’s for. Understanding your customers is a crucial factor for being able to choose the right design elements, such as typography, color schemes, layout and navigation, in addition to knowing your audience’s demographics, things like age, gender, location, etc, you need to discover what makes them tick. Who are they? What drives them? What are their beliefs, and values? Which other companies are they buying from? What products do they use? The more you know about them, the better you can design branding that meets their needs and requirements. So spend some time thinking through those questions, thinking through their demographics, really pinning down who your target audience is. Once you’ve done that, you can move on to the next step, which is to create personas.

So now it’s time to step into your clients shoes. Create personas for each type of client you’ll be engaging with and dream up some real life scenarios. Think about what they’ll be looking for when they land on your site, and how easy it is to find that information. Consider how they’ll find you and what you want them to do when they arrive. Having a clear picture of your marketing goals and your users’ requirements will enable you to design for example, the appropriate website functionality as well as plan a relevant social media content strategy. So if you know if you have that person in mind, you literally can base each and every design that you create on that person. And that is why we also include an ideal client section in a brand style guide. So whichever design you work with to ensure that they know that from the get go and that they’re keeping that in mind when they design your marketing material.

The third thing you want to do is check out the competition. So it’s common for businesses to be looking over their shoulders, or peeking into the yard next door to see what’s happening. by evaluating your competition, you can gain a much clearer picture of where your organization stands. Look carefully at your competitors branding to see what they have in common. You’re not looking to copy them, but rather to see what works and what doesn’t. Look at usability, design, content, layout, and navigation and optimization. Look for things that do well, but also seek out any weaknesses and opportunities to gain a strategic advantage.

Next, put aside your personal preferences. So this is something that can be a bit tricky, because you’re going to naturally be drawn to a certain color scheme, or to a certain font, but is that the same color scheme or font that your ideal client is going to be drawn to? So now that you’ve kind of gotten yourself into the shoes of your ideal client, and you are aware of what they’re thinking and what they’re drawn to, you need to put your personal preferences aside. So in creating a brand, it’s absolutely essential that you put aside your personal preferences in favor of what works best for the clients. You may wish to try the latest cutting edge trend. But again, remember what appeals to you may be a total turnoff for the people engaging with it. Rather stay focused on the client and produce branding that enhances their experience, and is a perfect fit for the target audience.

Number five, on how to design for a particular audience is to use typography to speak the language. So now we kind of get into the nitty gritty. So we’ve identified our target audience, we’ve created a persona, we’ve checked out the competition, we’ve put our personal preferences aside. And now we’re getting into the nitty gritty of identifying things like fonts, and colors for our branding. So custom typography is a fantastic way to express brand personality. And there are numerous fonts to choose from, but make sure that you choose wisely. So for a traditional corporate feel, serif fonts, which are those with the little feet, so it’s those fonts that each kind of vertical or horizontal line ends with another little line or a little foot, those do a lovely job for a traditional or corporate feel. Whereas a contemporary modern feel can be achieved by selecting a sans serif font. So it’s essentially a font without feet, which is more streamlined. Kids, however, will enjoy a more fun cartoon style font. That analysis was based more or less on age. But you can already see how different fonts will appeal to different audiences.

Font size is also a consideration. So if your audience is likely to include senior citizens or people with sight problems, you need to use a minimum of 12 point fonts and have options to increase the size on digital mediums when necessary. So that’s just something to keep in mind when it comes to your typography.

And then moving on to colors. We know that color can influence people’s moods and emotions and sway their behavior. So you need to think very carefully about the tone you wish to achieve. You should have a good idea of the type of colors that will appeal to your clients from your initial research. Start by identifying two main colors to work from. This will make it easy for your customers to recognize and remember your brand. So when it comes to colors, you definitely want to consider which colors your ideal client is going to be drawn to. But you also want to think about the meaning of those colors, and what emotion those colors convey. And this is something that I covered extensively in an episode on color theory. But essentially, each and every color carries a meaning or emotion. And it’s something that people subconsciously feel when they come into contact with that color. And so you want to be careful when choosing a color scheme for your brand to ensure that it fits with your overall message and with the solution that you’re kind of bringing to the table. So I just wanted to put that in there because I think when it comes to colors, it’s not necessarily just what colors your target audience likes. It’s also what colors are going to match your brand message. So it’s also good practice to look for color combinations that are already working while in your industry. And we know that within the counseling therapy realm, color schemes incorporating blues and greens tend to do very well.

So we’ve now identified our typography and our color scheme. Moving on to images. So you want to include enticing images. The old cliched saying of a picture’s worth 1000 words remains true to this day. Images are processed quicker than words. So they give users an easy route into your content. Therefore, choose images that are relevant, and that will pique people’s imagination and curiosity. Images are a great tool for breaking up text and adding interest to a design, though take care not to include images for the sole purpose of looking pretty. If they have little relevance to your content, your users will be left feeling confused. And I feel like this happens a lot, people are, I think, tempted to include imagery and design. They think that design has to include images. And it really doesn’t. Even now with the trend towards kind of simplification, and less is more and more whitespace. Now more than ever, you do not need to include images. You really only want to include an image if you feel it’s absolutely necessary, if it’s going to add value to your overall message. Or if it’s something that’s going to appeal to your audience, of course. But yeah, it’s definitely not necessary, it’s not something that you need to just kind of throw in there for the hell of it.

Having said that, think carefully about your audience when selecting imagery for your branding. So if you are going to incorporate images, then think carefully about what’s going to appeal to the audience and your kind of what’s going to match their preference, and what’s going to communicate to them what your brand is about. I often say to people that I am all for having images on websites that include people. Having said that, not your common stock images that appear fake, for example, you can see that the person is fake laughing. And on that note, you can find really great authentic images on unsplash.com, or pexels.com. So I’m all about having images with people because I think it’s something that people can relate to more than, say an object. So especially for counseling practices with such a personal service, coming to a website, if I’m feeling depressed, where I see a bunch of authentic laughing people, that’s where I want to be, that’s where I want to get to. And so I’m going to contact you for an appointment because I want to become that laughing person on your website. So your images can be really powerful, if done correctly.

Number eight is to think about your content. So another cliched thing that remains true is that content is king, or queen. Your design efforts will be in vain if the content is inappropriate or lacking in quality. Your audience has an effect on the type of content and the style of writing. If the website is for a specific profession then industry specific jargon is acceptable and often necessary. But if it’s for general use, too much jargon will result in people bouncing away in confusion. So again, I think this is something that applies very much to counseling websites. I think, as counselors who have spent years studying and who have written tons of essays using your industry jargon, it can be tempting to include all of that jargon onto your website. But again, you need to remember who your target audience is. So who are the people who are going to be coming and engaging on your website? They aren’t people who have studied necessarily for many years within your field. They are just your average Joe, who is going through something difficult and who wants to feel understood and who wants to feel like they can relate to you from the get go. So you want to make sure that your content is written in such a way that’s going to appeal to your ideal clients and that they are going to be able to understand. A friendly conversational tone is perfect for a health and lifestyle website.

So the second last thing to keep in mind when it comes to designing for your particular audience is to order your information hierarchically. So we’ve spoken about this before in previous episodes, but ordering information according to visual hierarchy will help your users navigate the content and absorb the information according to their preferences. Take a human centered approach to design by basing your layout on how users will expect it to be. So again, this is kind of making use of best practices. And also things like realizing that people read in a capital F or a capital E or a Zed shape. So making sure that the layout of your design is always keeping that in mind. And then things like when it comes to websites, how the navigation is always at the top of the page, the logo is always at the top left, just things like that, it makes it easier for users to interact with you when things are where they expect them to be. A visual hierarchy gives all elements an order of importance according to how they’re positioned and displayed. The most important thing should be the first thing users lay their eyes on. And it should be the loudest, brightest and boldest thing on a design. The second most important thing should be a little smaller and carry less visual weight. And so. So that’s kind of just explaining how that visual hierarchy works.

Finally, you want to surprise and delight your audience. So think how good it feels when a friend turns up at your house with your favorite food. You’re delighted, right? So can you add the same feeling of surprise and delight to your branding? Think of introducing a fun, quirky or helpful factor that will surprise and delight your users. This will make them more likely to remember you and become repeat visitors and it will help your brand personality shine through. People are more likely to work with companies that make them feel happy and comfortable. So if you can put a smile on your face, you’re more likely to turn them from visitor to a client. So definitely think including some of your personality, some quirky fun, helpful facts on your website or even in your social media is a great place to do that.

So I hope this has been helpful in helping you design for your audience, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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[SAM]:
Thanks for listening to the Marketing a Practice podcast. If you need help with branding your business, whether it be a new logo, rebrand, or you simply want to have a print flyer designed, head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram @samanthacarvalhodesign. Finally, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes if you like what you’ve heard. Talk to you soon.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.