Research Your Target Customers

If you sell to everyone, you are selling to no one.

For a relatively small business, you need to find your focus, which is your group of target customers.

For example, targeting “all moms” would be too broad. It would make sense to narrow your focus and target only “stay at home moms that want to minimise their environmental impact”.

“Knitters” are too broad, but “hobbyist knitters who loves colours and knits for babies” would be a better group of target customers.

For your Etsy shop, here are a few examples that you can narrow down your target customers:

• Age
• Income
• Education
• Family
• Occupation
• Hobbies
• Personal values
• Style

Once you have an idea of your group of target customers, it’s time to research what they are thinking. So that we can shape our brand positioning for them.

On Etsy, it could be hard to know exactly who fits perfectly into your target group, but we can make some assumptions to help us in the process.

Customers who buy from your direct competitors are likely what your products target as well. And the good thing is, they are already saying what they like and don’t like. You just have to search for them.

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These few steps should be repeated a few times to get information for multiple shoppers.

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Method 1

One of my favourite tool is Karen Check. This free tool shows you all the reviews by a particular user on Etsy. It’s originally intended to find out the difficult customers who leave unfair reviews, but it’s actually a great tool to help get a complete picture of what your target customers care about.

Go to your competitors’ Etsy shops and look for products that are close to what you are selling. Customers buying those products should be similar to your target customer group. Choose reviews that are longer with more of an opinion. Preferably that customer fits your target customer description.

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Click into the user profile and copy the user name to paste into Karen Check. You should be able to see a list of reviews left by the user. One drawback of this tool is that it doesn’t show you the product purchased, but in most cases you will be able to see whether that review is related to your niche.

Mark down the reviews that answer these questions:

• What do they like? What attracts them?
• What's the common aspect that they mention in the reviews?
• What are they disappointed of?
• Are there comparisons to what they have purchased before?
  

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Method 2

Go back to the customer's user page. Now instead of looking at the reviews, check out the target customers’ favourite list: Both favourite products and favourite shops. 

The favourites reveal more about their preference and what they care about. For example, a customer may have bath bomb, essential oil, and soy candle in their favourite list, which could mean that they practice self care and love a relaxing lifestyle.

Method 3

Go on Instagram and go to your competitors’ pages.

Look at the tagged posts and see what customers are saying about the products. Similar to reading Etsy reviews, mark down things they like, dislike, and comparisons.

Afterwards, read the comments of the tagged posts and the competitors’ own posts. They should also reveal some useful information.

Research Competitors Brand Value & Purpose

One of the main goals of branding is to make your brand stand out. Good branding encourages customers to choose your products over your competitors.

That means you need to know what your competitor is doing, because Etsy shoppers will compare your shop with your competitors. And you won't be able to stand out if your brand positioning ends up too similar to others.

But how can you find that out?

There are a few potential places to look of what your competitors values and positioning are:

• Shop tagline, which is underneath their shop name
• About section. Usually this section will list out their values, purpose, philosophy, etc.
• Product description

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