DoingMedia

What matters most about your audience is “Who do you think they are?” Your audience knows who they are. You have to get to know them if you expect your media communication to be successful. So, how do you know who your audience is? You can start with the purpose of your project. What are you trying to achieve? Then, who do you need to “speak to” so you can achieve that. Simple enough. Well, maybe.

Really drilling down into your purpose to find the audience can be difficult. You may be too close to the project. Or your customer is too close to the project. You have an advantage there because you can use your outside viewpoint to ask your customer some challenging questions.

I’ve had many customers who have said their project is for “everyone” But, who is everyone? “People who would buy our product.” What kind of person is that? “They’re people who need to [insert your verb here.]” So kids wouldn’t buy your product? “Oh no; people who own a home.” How much does your product cost? “Quality is really important to us so our product costs more than our competitors. About 20% more. Every part of it is made in the USA!” Do you sell the product overseas? “No, mostly to people in the Upper Midwest and Northeast.”

So that wouldn’t really be everyone, would it? Looks like the customer for their product, and the audience for your project, is a Northeastern or Midwestern US homeowner. They value quality over price, which translates into well educated and/or a higher income bracket than most. Discovering the audience from your customer is more art than science, more conversation than interrogation.

Defining the audience shapes the language, the visuals and the media we’ll use in the project. So, if this is so simple why don’t many communicators do it more often? Because it takes time. And the fun stuff is the “creating” part, right? And it may be easier to listen to what your customer tells you (because they should know their customers) so you can turn the project around and get paid faster. But if the project fails or doesn’t hit the mark your customer will look at you and ask “What happened?”

Demographics is the name of the game. Basically, it’s how you describe a group of people.

• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Location
• Education
• Occupation
• Income
• Hobbies
• Family structure
• [Your Descriptor Here]

You may have multiple audiences, each described slightly differently. You could have a primary audience and then secondary or tertiary audience. You may need multiple vehicles in multiple media in multiple venues or locations to reach them all effectively.

A popular concept today, especially in web design, is the persona. A persona can help you or your customer to visualize “who” your audience is. In the film business they call this a character’s “back story.” Some personas even use pictures to help with the visualization.
Often, personas represent “users.” This is probably a carryover from the software development world who think of the people that use their “software applications” as “users”. And admittedly, many websites, or portions therof, are software applications. To some developers and web designers “users” make mistakes.”

“User” is an “inside looking out” view of an audience member. In communication its up to the sender (you) to make sure the message is received correctly. Receivers (audience members) don’t make mistakes they misunderstand. To make your media project successful you need make sure your audience doesn’t “misunderstand.” So you need to know who they are.
Users visit rehab, people visit websites.

If you think of a website as another media, an incredibly rich media, then the concept of “user” breaks down pretty quickly. If you can identify exactly who an audience member is that visits a website (through some sign up or registration process) then you have a “person.” But before that you have an audience member. In a group of audience members. Who can generally be described a particular way. And who, it could be argued, would behave relatively the same.

Discovering the audience sets out the roadmap for your project. If you haven’t discovered your audience then the question to ask is “What do you think you’re doing?!”