Emily Heyward: The Power of Focus

August 19 & 20: Built to Last Audio Conference from Buffer and Wistia

Speaker: Emily Heyward, co-founder and chief brand officer of Red Antler

Links:

• Red Antler website
• Red Antler on Instagram
• Emily's book 'Obsessed - Building a Brand People Love from Day One'

Episode notes and action points

Launch with focus

We have choice overload. There's too much information. So in this landscape, brands that come forward with a simple, clear offering are able to focus more on what they stand for and why it matters versus getting bogged down in the minutiae of their product offering.

For example, when Casper launched it had just one mattress. And because of that, they didn't have to get bogged down in all the details about what makes each mattress different from the other. They were able to tell a story about why sleep matters to people, which is about really enabling you to live your best life.

Know your target audience

Focus comes not only from how you think about your product offering but also from knowing who your target audience is and just as importantly who they're not.

A great example of this is Ursa Major, a clean skin care brand that offers products that have clean, nontoxic ingredients. The brand is rooted in an incredibly specific ethos which they describe as “low maintenance, high impact.” The brand is definitely for people who want to invest in great skincare products. But it's not for people who are looking for a full-blown beauty routine. It's actually for people who want products that feel amazing and work, but they kind of just want to get it done and then get out there to enjoy life.

If you look at the brand and how it communicates, it has a very outdoorsy, nature-oriented, adventurous feel, and an adventurous target audience. This might turn people off. But those people are not its target audience. By being clear about who it’s for, Ursa Major is able to build stronger, lasting relationships with its customers. Ursa Major doesn’t want to serve everyone who cares about beauty, it wants to serve the customers that are the right fit with its brand.

Action point: Who is your target audience? Try to define who your company is for and also which audiences aren’t your target customers.

Understand what separates your brand from others

Red Antler worked with the dating app Hinge to help it reposition and differentiate from other apps in the dating space like Tinder.

The Red Antler team helped Hinge to relaunch as the relationship app, which very much put a stake in the ground that they were for people who were seeking something more long-term. They put together a marketing campaign around the idea that ‘Hinge is made to be deleted’, which clearly said to consumers: we want you to use Hinge, meet someone and get off Hinge.

Tinder’s brand campaigns at the time were very different and rooted in the idea that being single is a terrible thing to waste. And it really embraces the fun of being single and not settling down.

Neither approach is right or wrong. But both apps have incredibly clear positioning of why they exist in the world. This also creates a better experience for each set of customers because you're among like-minded people who are more likely to be seeking the same kind of experience that you're seeking.

Whatever industry you’re in, you’ll have competitors. But what your brand stands for and how you approach solving problems for your target audience can be very different.