Who Is Your Community?

Your community can be defined as people who share a common interest or goal. Your community will have members who actively engage with one another as well as people who engage just occasionally. Consider the people who are always commenting on your social media postings or participating in forums. They might also be people who are frequently mentioning and supporting your company. These are the people who live in your community. Then there are those who rarely or never respond to your social media posts, and they may never respond to your forums. They may attend a specific event or wear your brand’s clothes or products while getting groceries.

To best determine your community, consider what event you would host that your ideal customers would want to attend. Consider your event to be like having the ideal birthday party. What are their preferences, as well as the event’s theme and decorations? What activities are available? When you know what the event will look like, determining your branding becomes a lot easier. If you’re not sure what that event would look like for your company, here’s a breakdown of the various factors to consider during the market research phase to ensure you’re planning a spectacular event.

What Psychographics Dictate Their Purchase Decisions?

This is the most important phase in deciding the composition of your community. Psychographics are a group’s beliefs, goals, and attitudes. This is really useful when establishing your community because it helps you to better tailor your branding to them. Consider Walmart customers, whose common psychographics are A) convenience or B) pricing. Compare that to Costco buyers, who are all about obtaining a good deal.

Psychographics has two tiers. The first stage is to ask yourself why people want to spend their money on your goods or service. Someone does not wake up one day and declare, “I’m going to give money to a business for no reason.” Even non-profits do not receive funds simply for existing. The purchase has an emotional component. Someone paying a business to mow their yard may do so because they want a beautiful yard or because they are often away and feel overwhelmed keeping it up to HOA standards. Each of these emotive reasons will have a distinct language and focus that your branding should consider. One is someone who is feeling overwhelmed in life, while the other is looking for perfection and beauty.

The second level is on a larger scale. It is the point at which your goal transcends the pain point and enters the domain of aspiration. This is an extremely powerful position to be in, and it is frequently required for success in the B2C space. Appealing to your ideal customer’s desires and goals.

These psychographics can be things like GymShark with the aspirations of their community. Their focus in 2023 is geared around the aspirations of people wanting to feel good and look good. They understand that psychographic covers a very large audience. Verse Nike is focused on the psychographic of being at your best and getting things done, two completely different psychographics selling the same products.
Remember that the market size of these psychographics will fluctuate over time. Weight lifting among people aged 25 and younger is at an all-time high in 2023. GymShark’s success depends on this. If the gym rat market size were to decline tomorrow, GymShark would need to modify psychographics or face a loss in sales and loyalty.

Keep in mind that you can adjust your psychographic to include a larger audience. For example, you may emphasize the yoga mat holder’s environmental friendliness and use of recycled materials. This would definitely appeal to a specific demographic. A larger population, on the other hand, may be folks who desire an ordered house, and the value your yoga mat holder provides to that. What you focus on will determine the size of the market, but it’s typically beneficial to start with an underserved psychographic and gradually widen it.

Nike is a fantastic example of a company that has gradually expanded their psychographic until it encompasses everything. Its psychographic was designed for people who enjoy running. People who get an endorphin rush from running; yet, after Michael Jordan, they drew a larger crowd than runners, necessitating the creation of a broader psychographic that they advertised to. Coca-Cola is another great example of expanding to the masses. Their advertisements and marketing are always about sharing a Coke with a friend or family member. They concentrate on a psychographic that is shared by practically all humans: the need to be loved and to love others. These companies have demonstrated the power of widening your psychographic, as well as the power of focusing on the psychographic.

What Personality Traits Make Up Your Target Avatar?

Another very similar aspect to consider for your company are the personality traits that comprise your target avatar. Whereas psychographics should be limited to 1-3, traits might have many more. Likes, dislikes, and held paradigms are examples of traits. Their held paradigms are how they see the world. For example, college students who regard Mark Zuckerberg as the peak of entrepreneurship and despise his attitude toward things are adhering to a widely held paradigm. A held paradigm is also someone who believes that real estate is the best investment, or someone who believes that hard labor is essential in life.

The reason these paradigms are so important is that they give better insight into what language and images connect to your ideal customers. This is crucial if you are going to have a powerful brand. You need your ideal customers to feel like you understand them. They need you to be like them. It personalizes the brand from being a corporate tower to being part of their lives.

Pro tip: Understanding what paradigms encourage people to buy from you and which ones discourage people from buying also gives you an idea of the marketing efforts that would be needed to grow your market size.

What Events Does Your Target Avatar Go To?

This question is all about having a better understanding of your customers. This can be accomplished by surveys, questions, following them on social media, attending events, or trial and error. The key benefit of this is that you can tap into a certain, known community size to serve as a foundation for your business.

Consider the company Nerd Fitness, which has capitalized on the large number of Star Wars fans who are interested in working out. The company’s founder developed a website including Star Wars memes, which became very popular among Star Wars fans. Although it’s not true that each and every Star Wars fan works out or wants to work out, the group is large enough that he has made over six figures through his website. This is the power that comes from tying your brand to a well-established community.

Another excellent illustration of this can be seen in the world of fashion with the Slow AF Run Club. They sell running apparel with the slogan “The best community on the internet for slow runners and walkers.” The only thing that can be considered proprietary about the company is its branding. When the founder participated in races, he saw that he wasn’t the only slower runner who still enjoyed running. He learned that other people were like him. As a result, he established this brand, and once again thanks to the nature of the internet and national sales, he’s been able to run a great side business by selling workout apparel to a certain segment of a community that’s already well-established.

Here are a few things to think about when conducting customer research: What kinds of activities might they attend, such as fairs, rodeos, city gatherings, athletic events, or sporting events? Consider niche events such as car exhibitions, Comic Con, aquarium shows, and so on. What “influencer” events would they attend, such as music events, YouTuber events, or brand events? What online communities or events are they likely to attend? Consider video game streaming, webinars, Zoom events, forums, Reddit, and so on. What communities might they be a part of already? Consider the brands they are associated with. Consider movies, TV shows, non-competing businesses, and so on.

A Few Tips

Consider what kinds of people your consumers are and the products and services you provide. For example, if you sell auto parts, looking for events centered on cars, modded cars, or Donut Media’s event would be beneficial. Alternatively, if you are selling a healthy alternative snack, consider what health events can come up that will draw your customers to them. Things like strongman events, yoga, and running. You want to identify a current community in which they are involved.

Keep in mind that in order to expand and scale, you can’t rely on just one community to establish a subcommunity out of. This is because normally no single community is large enough to support your expansion. As the size of your organization increases, you will frequently find that you require different communities from which to recruit members for various subgroups. Keep in mind, too, that the way you brand yourself might need to change.

Why Do They Go To That Event?

Once you’ve determined the events your target avatar attends, you should analyze why they attended those events. Was it just for fun? Was it for educational purposes? Was it to do something out of the ordinary? Was it for the sake of bragging rights? Most events draw people for a reason, and the deeper you can go on the psychographic scale, the more you will understand how to grow your community. Consider a neighborhood fair where couples and families with children aged 4 to 12 are snapping pictures. The psychographic variables that drove both groups to attend the event should be taken into account.

In a personal experience I had in Portland, Oregon, during the 2023 Cinco de Mayo fiesta, the lack of shopping interest outside of the food lines indicated that it was primarily a means to get out of the house and do something unusual. It was an opportunity to have a one-of-a-kind “cultural” experience. Therefore, I recommend you create a hypothesis, then test it by asking individuals at the event questions to see if your hypothesis is true, which is critical to knowing for sure. This provides important information to consider when contemplating your own community.

What Are Shared Experiences?

Another thing to think about with your target avatar is any shared experiences they may have had. You should think about how big emotional events have touched their lives and linked them. Consider mom’s love, feeling like the black sheep, heartbreak, divorce, loss of a loved one, sports, war, COVID, societal change, moving across the country, and so on. These common experiences foster an immediate sense of understanding and a sense of belonging. When attempting to grow your community, this is one of the most powerful things you can draw inspiration from.

Pro tip: Think about what transpired that prompted them to want to buy from you. Who mentioned it, and what happened to change their mind?

What Would Be The Theme Of Your Event?

What would be the theme of your event?

Now that you’ve considered all of the psychological aspects of your ideal consumer, determine what event you would hold for them that would entice them to attend. If you use subgroups from other communities, this can be made easier because you can look up and consider what pictures and colors they already associate with. This, however, is not always the case. If you know and understand the psychographics, traits, hobbies, and influencers, you should have a much easier time deciding what to include in the event.

You should begin with the desired outcome of your event. What word would they choose to describe the event? This is critical for ensuring intentionality. Consider what term they would use to tell their friends about it. Go to other events that your ideal consumer attends and ask them to describe them in one phrase for some insight ideas. It could be thrilling, unusual, informative, valuable, entertaining, wild, motivational, romantic, and so forth. You want to guarantee that you are creating this event with that same level of intentionality.

The next question you need to ask yourself is, “How will they say they felt after the party?” Feelings such as relief, excitement, motivation, readiness to take on the world, peace, enhanced preparation, increased self-assurance, etc. It is crucial to keep in mind that despite the fact that this term will frequently link to the purchase psychographic that has been solved. When you’ve decided how you want the end result to turn out, it’s time to start figuring out the remainder of the details.

After you’ve decided how you want people to feel and what you want them to say, it’s time to start thinking creatively about how to make that happen. The question is, what kind of cuisine would they like to eat. Which color combinations do you think people will anticipate seeing? What kinds of things or activities might they anticipate seeing or participating in? Expand the scope of your event. Then, drawing inspiration from it, develop a brand that is uniquely you. Make use of different colors, images, and connecting points all throughout your company and marketing efforts.

pro tip: After you have determined the psychographics, attributes, and hobbies of your target audience, the chatbots on our website should be able to assist you in selecting the appropriate color, typefaces, imagery, and other elements for your brand.