Deep thoughts
Know your audience
Whilst demographic detail is important for large amounts of data it can be hugely misleading when it comes to marketing and designing for purpose, and is often used incorrectly.
Listing the age, affluence, location and gender of a person does not help us understand what interests them, what makes them tick and certainly what type of product or service we should be exposing them to. This is where demographics can be used incorrectly in marketing to prove a point about audiences which can lead to a catastrophic misfiring in marketing, especially digital marketing. If we don’t know who they are and what interests the audience then your brand can become irrelevant and dismissed.
Here is an example.. If I spoke about an affluent male who drives a Range Rover, lives in Surrey and has kids, are we talking about Ozzy Osbourne or King Charles? I suspect there isn’t much in common in the way they purchase clothes, accessories, IT or relate to their audiences. These two people, polar opposite, come under the same dot on graphs and reports based on numbers only.
When we look at the best UX for brands, we are thinking about who you want to talk to, and how you talk to them, what motivates them and what interests them to come back again and again. Not everyone fits in the same box every day. If I have had a bad morning then my decision making would be different to if I have had a relaxing lunch for example. You cannot possibly know this about people day-to-day but you can assume making things easy to digest, interesting and presented in a way that is considered (ie not dumped on a page) is a good start for most people – no matter what they are buying.
Know your audience.
