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Once you've put together your vintage buyer persona, you'll find it easier to speak directly to them. We cover how in our series on finding new customers
We’ve created an example of a customer persona that can help to establish a target audience for your vintage shop or service.
Another way to look at target audiences is through a process called "niching down."
Niching down accepts that most markets are too large and too saturated, and that in order to stand out, you need to "find your people." These are the potential customers who identify with you and your brand.
Let's look at another example.
Say you sell vintage and pre-loved baby and kids’ clothes.
Your target audience would not be “anyone who is shopping for secondhand baby clothes.”
While that’s certainly a smaller audience than the much broader “people who are interested in kids’ clothes,” it’s still a massive amount of people.
Attempting to reach so many people means your message may get lost among all of the other vintage shops selling baby clothes, and/or that you don’t actually find the right people who may buy.
So let’s say you sell locally for your vintage baby clothes shop and have met a lot of your customers in person. You’ve noticed something about them after going through the customer persona process. Most of them are first-time parents.
You’ve realized that parents who have more than one child tend to use more hand-me-downs and don’t shop as much for clothes for their kids period, whether traditional retail or secondhand. They're not buying much from you.
You’ve also realized that because your customers are more likely to be first-time parents, they have a lot of expenses with buying things for their new kid and don’t have endless available income for clothes.
They care about sustainability, because they are bringing a new child into a changing world. They also care about individuality, because they’re Gen Z or young Millennials and standing out and expressing their identities is important to them.
And lastly, because they are first-time parents, they are thrilled at the prospect of buying cool, fun items to deck out their child. It’s a whole new wardrobe world.
So your target audience is: First-time parents looking for reasonably priced, sustainable fashions that will make their baby look one-of-a-kind at daycare. (If you only sell local to your area, then add the location into your target audience.)
When you have that insight, everything you do points back to that target audience.
Let’s put all of this against what’s called the “so what” test.
The "so what" test is when you make a statement and keep asking “so what” until you get to the inner motivation of your customer.
We’re going to continue with our vintage baby clothing example.
What are you selling?
“I sell vintage and pre-loved baby clothing for ages 0-3.”
That’s a good start. We know what you sell. But many other vintage shops also sell this. So what?
“I sell vintage and pre-loved baby clothing for ages 0-3 from the 1970s and 1980s.”
Now we have a deeper idea of what you sell. But…so what?
“So because I sell baby clothes from the ’70s and ’80s, I have a lot of incredibly well-made timeless pieces and also funky items.”
These are the features of your products. But so what? What is it going to do for your customer?
“So because I bridge timeless and funky, you can mix and match everything I sell. Your baby is guaranteed to not look like any other at daycare.”
We’re starting to get the benefits of what you sell. This baby is going to be an individual. They’re going to stand out and look different in a sea of babies at daycare. Does a baby care about that, though? So what?
“Because your baby is going to look unique and stylish, you’re going to seem cool to the other parents at daycare pickup.”
Now you’re tapping into a core customer desire. You’re getting at what’s in it for your customer rather than just talking about the features of the product you’re selling.
This is, of course, not their only desire (you could do the same exercise and focus on sustainability instead of individuality and come up with a different core desire) — but knowing what we know about the customer already, there's a very good chance this might be one of them.
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Continued from above
This all sounds a little weird, right? And it seems tangentially linked to your baby jean jacket or whatever product it is you’re selling.
Many of us have an inner desire to be liked by others. That’s okay! You’re not actually going to *say* that you know parents want to be liked by other parents or that they seem cool to other parents in your listing or marketing for your shop. That’s kind of off-putting!
But if you always keep the desire top of mind, the insight will trickle through when you create social media content, or when you write ads or listings. You will speak directly to these people. It’s subtle, but it works.
This is not manipulative. You're not doing this to make customers think something they don't already think. You're just uncovering what really makes them tick.
It's a little bit marketing and it's a little bit psychology, sure — but ultimately you are discovering the best way to connect with these people.
People don't want to be sold to. They want to align with brands and shops that understand them.
Digging this deep is what gives you true understanding about your customer.
To recap, the target audience is: First-time parents looking for reasonably priced, sustainable fashions that will make their baby look one-of-a-kind at daycare.
Posting a listing for a baby Harley-Davidson jean jacket?
Some sample text:
“Cool kid alert: Harley-Davidson jean jacket, [insert listing details].”
Or “Sustainable style for your little sprout: Harley-Davidson jean jacket, [insert listing details].”
It’s subtle. Just a simple phrase nodding to the “cool kid” or the “sustainable style” taps into these parents’ desires on something as quick as a listing that you’re firing off.
You know the desires because you’ve researched them. So when you include them in your sales touch points, the parents feel like you are talking directly to them.
You can of course expand much more on these insights beyond three or four words for some of your longer-form content (email marketing/newsletters, brand/story-based social media content, etc.)
The insights about your target audience extends across your business: if you post non-product content on social media, you could centre it around one of four things: 1) being a first-time parent 2) pricing 3) sustainability 4) individuality. You can consider these themes your “content pillars” (we will discuss content pillars more in a future post).
Maybe these people see your listings or your content but they don’t buy right away. Over time, though, when they do decide they want to buy, they turn to you first because they feel like you “get” them.
One of the core insights we discovered using the “so what” test in part 4 was that parents want clothing that makes their kid look cool because they’ll also look cool.
Sample text for a listing:
For a social media post:
The more targeted you can be with your content (listing descriptions, hang tag information, about your shop info, social media captions, ad copy, etc.) the more your shop will resonate with your customers and potential customers.
When things resonate with your customers, they’re more likely to keep you top of mind. And you start to attract other customers who are just like them.
Knowing your target audience will also help you to make decisions on which shows to exhibit at, which neighbourhoods to open a pop-up shop in, which online marketplaces to consider.
If you sell high-end antiques, you’ll want to exhibit at shows that cater to customers with more income (maybe it’s location of the show, or vendors on the list who have similar inventory to yours). If you’re in the vintage clothing scene, you may want to investigate urban events that place an emphasis on fashion and style.
Once you know your customer personas and your target audience, the other dominoes start to fall into place.
What do you know about your customer? Let us know in the comments!
