By Ryan Laffler, Account Manager

You brush your teeth, make your kids scrambled eggs, and almost forget to turn off the stove when… that’s it!!

“What if there was a phone app that alerted you when you leave a kitchen appliance on? It could prevent house fires… it could save lives!”

Coming up with a new product, service, or idea can be very exciting, but it also poses some difficult questions. One of the first questions you should ask yourself is, “Who is this product/service for? Or similarly, Who is my target audience?”

If your new product helps keep people warm, then your target audience might be households living in areas that get an average of ten inches of snow per year. Perhaps you invented a trendy, new social media platform for comic book fans. In this instance, your target audience probably does not include your 83 year old, lovable yet technologically inept “MeMaw”.

Once a brand understands its target audience, it should begin to position itself in a way that connects with that audience. For example, a company that manufactures toy dolls might negotiate an endorsement from a children’s TV star in an effort to connect with kids. A brand can connect with a specific age group for any number of reasons. Above is an interesting infographic that show how different generations of people connect with a collection of lifestyle brands. It can sometimes be difficult to determine why a specific demographic gravitates towards a specific brand. For the most part, however, it a result of a brand identifying a target demographic and then crafting advertising or PR campaigns targeted directly at them.

My point is this: it pays to understand your customers. This takes time, research, and of course, money. So before you take your brilliant, new idea to market, ask yourself these 10 questions to help you determine if you have a target market and what it is.