Tip Sheet: Who is your Audience?

28 May 2011 in Audience Development Blog, General

Understanding your audience will help you to think about what you are doing, why you are doing it, who you are engaging and what your message should be to get people to pay attention.

 

Who is your audience?

Who is your audience?

Common Marketing Misunderstandings

  1. The belief that because you find what you do interesting, everyone else should too. This often leads to marketing and promotional materials that miss the point – what is it that actually interests your audiences and will motivate them to engage with you?
  2. Limited budgets force you to adopt a one-size-fits-all style and approach for your marketing strategy, but it is impossible to effectively reach all the people all the time.

If you are not doing this already, then it is a good idea to begin targeting your audiences and therefore you’re marketing sooner rather then later. Recognise the diversity of audiences and people; don’t try to please all of them with the same message and offering.

Definitions

Market – A market is any broad collection of people who might have an interest in exchanging something, coming into contact or engaging with your organisation.

Target Marketing – Is the breaking down of a market into segments and then concentrating your marketing efforts on one or a few key segments.

Target Market – Is who you aim your marketing efforts to. This is the group that you want to engage with and who have an interest in what you have to offer.

Market Segmentation – Is the act of dividing markets into discrete groups to be treated individually. It is about understanding the needs of your audiences, and with this insight you can form groups who share the same or similar needs.

 

Of course you can target the entire population of an area, a region, a country or indeed the world, but do you have the resources to reach the entire world? With limited resources you will want to focus using your resources in places where they are most likely to have an effect in helping you to achieve your marketing aims and objectives.

Audiences themselves don’t notice how businesses segment their markets, when choosing between competing offers people will select the offering that meets their needs better than any other. To win over a market segment then, a business or organisation has to ensure that their offering meets these needs better than any other at a price your market perceives as providing superior value for money (which does not mean it has to be the cheapest!). This is how people operate within all markets.

Where to Start

  1. Identify the kinds of people who make up your organisation’s current and desired markets
  2. Subdivide these people into potential market segments
  3. Then gain some understanding of the nature and size of these segments.

 

How to Differentiate and Define Your Markets

Not all people are the same, or share the same attitudes, opinions, or motivations. These differing attitudes, opinions and motivations shape behaviour.

Geographic Segmentation

  • By Region – continent, country, council area, village etc.
  • By Size of Area – size of population, number of businesses etc.
  • Population Density – urban, suburban, rural, remote
  • Climate – common weather patterns to certain geographic regions.

Demographic Segmentation

Age, Gender, Family size, Family Lifecycle (single parents, extended families, grandparents), Generation, Income, Occupation, Education, Ethnicity, Nationality, Religion, Social class.

Psychological Segmentation

  • According to lifestyles what activities, interests and opinions do they hold?
  • What values do they uphold?
  • What are their aspirations?
  • What relationship do they have with the organisation i.e. friends, members, volunteers.

Behavioural Segmentation

Based on audience/ visitor behaviour:

  • Benefits sought from the offerings
  • Usage of the offerings
  • Loyalty to the organisation
  • Engagement Status – potential audience member, first time attender, regular attender
  • Attitudes and Opinion – are your audiences passionate and active, or disengaged with the attitude: ‘this is not-for-me’.
  • Occasions – what holidays and events stimulate engagement.

Purchasing Segmentation

Based on audience/ visitor purchasing behaviour:

  • Frequency – who are your regular, frequent, infrequent, lapsed and non-attendees. .
  • What types of events/ activities are engaged with most often, least often.
  • Which groups engage with multiple offerings?

Understanding why people buy things (products, services, activities, events etc):

  • To satisfy basic needs
  • To solve problems
  • To make themselves feel good.

How could we apply this to our understanding of audiences?

  • Theatre performances – satisfies a basic need to experience live entertainment.
  • Craft Fairs – solves the problem of what to do with your weekend guests
  • Musical performances – the audience member leaves feeling entertained and culturally enriched.

Businesses, companies and organisations have to work harder to ensure their marketing has the greatest impact possible. Increased competition makes it impossible for a mass marketing strategy to succeed. Audiences and customers are becoming more diversified and selective; businesses have to diversify their products relative to their customers.

Market Segmentation

To effectively engage people your marketing strategy has to recognise their needs. Different audiences have different needs, and it is rarely possible to satisfy all customers by treating them alike.

First you need to examine who you are already engaged with – who are you talking to and most importantly who is listening? Then think about what you already know about them.

Benefits of Market Segmentation and Target Marketing

  • It makes the promotion, pricing and distribution of your products and offerings easier and more cost-effective.
  • Provides a focus for your marketing activities.
  • Helps you to better understand your audience’s needs and desires.
  • Enables you to better target and position your offering.
  • Encourages two-way communication between your audience and organisation.
  • Maintains more effective relationships with audiences.
  • Helps to retain audiences and attract new ones.
  • Improves service delivery standards (or customer care).
  • Reduces the cost/expense of marketing activities and increases your market share.
  • Guides market research.
  • Identifies competition and opportunities.

 

Areas to Consider When Segmenting Your Audience

  • Identifiable – can you measure the differentiating attributes of the segments?
  • Accessible – can you reach them through existing communication and distribution channels?
  • Substantial – are they large enough to justify the resources to target them?
  • Unique Needs – to justify separate offerings, the segments must respond differently to the different marketing mixes.
  • Durable – the segments should be relatively stable to minimise the cost of frequent changes.

 

Is Your Market Segment Worth It?

Market segmentation enables you to focus your marketing efforts and resources for the right types of people, but it is also important that you check this segment will be worthwhile developing, for instance does it fit with the relevant marketing objective or are there enough people in this segment to justify the time and money spent on developing it?

Market Segments worth bothering with are likely to be:

  • Measurable – you will be able to count how big the group is
  • Accessible – they are easy to reach and get to
  • Substantial – they are big enough to justify the time and expense
  • Unique – they are demonstrably different from any other segment
  • Appropriate – they fit with the organisation’s Vision, Mission and objectives.
  • Stable – they are unlikely to change in the short term, justifying building a relationship with them.

10 things you need to know about your audiences

  1. Who They Are – If you sell directly to individuals find out their gender, age and occupation. If you are selling to other businesses, find out what industry they are in, the size and type of business they are.
  2. What They Do – If you sell directly to individuals what are their occupations and interests. For business to business it is good to have an understanding of what they are trying to achieve.
  3. Why They Buy – If you can understand why audiences buy a product or offering, it is far easier to match their needs to the benefits your organisation can offer.
  4. When They Buy – If you can approach a customer at the time they want to buy, you will massively increase your chances of success.
  5. How They Buy – Some prefer to buy from a website, others prefer it face-to-face.
  6. How Much Money They Have – You will be more successful if you can match what you’re offering to what you know your audiences can afford.
  7. What Makes Them Feel Good About Buying – if you know what makes them tick then you can serve them in they way they prefer.
  8. What They Expect of You – if you customers expect quality productions and you don’t disappoint them, you stand to gain repeat business.
  9. What They Think About You – if your audiences enjoy dealing with you, they’re likely to buy from you more. And you can only tackle problems that customers have if you know what they are.
  10. What They Think About Your Competitors – If you know how your customers view competition, you stand a much better chance of staying ahead of your rivals.

Where do I get this information?

Organisations with computerised box-office systems or customer relationship management systems, have a good starting point in terms of the size of their audience, but they might not charge for admissions, or collect the type of data which streamlines the process of segmentation. But don’t worry if you haven’t got any data – there are other ways and means of understanding your audiences.

If the information on your target markets or current audiences isn’t immediately to hand, you could consider doing a piece of visitor/ audience research. Failing that, start with your best informed guess.

You can build a picture of general trends using published market information – you can access government statistics and market reports from commercial providers. Your own contacts and sales records can also be a great resource.

You can add to your knowledge by using field research – from surveys to discussions to testing offerings and products – to investigate audience’s attitudes and examine questions specific to your organisation, this is a far more valuable form of information, especially if it is then supported by statistical market information.

Market Intelligence

Try to find answers for:

  • Demand for your product/ offering – is it growing or shrinking?
  • What are the current general economic and market trends?
  • How customer requirements and buying behaviour could change in the future.
  • What new products are in your competitors pipeline – could yours look outdated?
  • How competitors are changing – what are their plans?
  • What do competitors offer and what prices do they charge?
  • How do competitors advertise and promote themselves?
  • Is there any forthcoming legislation which could affect your market?

You can Download this Tip Sheet and many more by visiting out site HI-Arts Audience Development.