An audience is a group of people who receive information from the same source. They could be listening, watching, or reading together or by themselves. For them to be called an audience, the key element is to get the information from the same medium. That could be the TV, radio, or a specific website on the internet.
An important detail is that audiences are not homogeneous. Meaning, although they have the same interest (or happened to observe the same medium), they are different by many factors.
For example, you, like thousands of other people on the Internet, are reading this article, although you are interested in the term audience, that doesn’t mean that you are interested in the services that I could provide. What is more, it doesn’t mean that you are interested in anything that someone else, who is reading the article, will be interested in.
So, the term “audience” refers to people who are informing themselves from the same medium.
That is why, in marketing communication and advertising the messages are usually directed to the so-called “target audience”.
Where the target audience refers to a group of people a product, service, or message is intended to reach. This group of people might not be interested in the same medium, but could be in one way or another, unified.
Usually, the unification is done on the basis of superficial demographic factors, such as:
- Age
- Gender
- Income Level
- Education
- Occupation
- Location
For example: Women, age 25-40, living in urban areas, earning $50-100K annually.
Another way to unify people in a target audience is the so-called Psychographics, which are not as superficial. More detailed psychological and lifestyle traits:
- Values and beliefs
- Interests and hobbies
- Personality traits
- Lifestyle choices
- Attitudes
But also, we could unify people based on behavior:
- Buying habits
- Spending power
- Brand loyalty
- Product usage frequency
- Preferred platforms (social media, retail, online, etc.)
And, of course, based on the so-called pain points. What problems do they need solved, or what goals do they want to achieve?
- What challenges do they face?
- How can your product/service help?
- What motivates them to make decisions?
In order to find your perfect audience, you could:
- Conduct market research (survey, focus groups)
- Competitor analysis
- Customer data (from existing users)
- Social media and web analytics
- Persona development (create user archetypes)