1.2 target audience

 

1.2 target audience james Morecroft

Target audience

It is useful to think about audiences having shared characteristics and to be able to group audiences using characteristics. In this way advertisers can more efficiently target the people who the producers want to get their message across to.

When identifying audiences, advertisers focus on shared characteristics. These are often based around four broad areas, often referred to as segments. These are:

1.      Geographic – characteristics associated with the region in which audiences live. These characteristics may be of a whole country or a much smaller geographic region such as county or city.

2.      Demographic – you examined demographics earlier in this book. Advertising products will be targeted at audiences that share characterizes such as age, gender, race and social status.

3.      Behavioral – an audience’s behavioral characteristics can be measured using surveys questionnaires use of store cards and so on. Advertises can then target audiences who regularly buy certain types od products frozen pizza for example. This is particularly useful for companies who are trying to gain a larger share of the market from their competitors.

4.      Psychographic – potential audiences can be divided into broad categories based on factors such as lifestyle, hobbies/interests, options and values. Knowing this information can help advertisers target products more effectively.

Segmenting audiences in this way helps us to understand what audiences might look like (their profiles), based on factors such as age, gender, lifestyles and interests.

 

By combining elements of these segments and eliminating others, advertisers can fine-tune the audiences that they wish to target. For example, an audience may be defined as young men aged 16-25(demographic information), who plays video games on a regular basis (behavioral and psychographic information), have a large proportion of disposable income (demographic and psychographic information), and live in the midlands (geographic information). This is known as audience profile.

KEY TERMS

Market share – the market is defined as all consumers who use a type of product, for example cornflakes. The market share is the percentage of those consumers who use a particular brand. The brand that the largest market share is usually most associated with the product.

Market research – The activity of gathering information about audience needs and preferences, conducted by a media producer or institution. This data is then used to target appropriate marketing and advertising at clearly defined audiences.

Brand awareness – The aim of most advertising is to ensure that an audience come to associate your brand with a specific product. The audience/consumer becomes “brand aware” and will hopefully, choose your brand over the competitors.

Segments – audience subgroups defined by sets of characteristics such as where they live or the lifestyle they live.

Audience profile – the specific demographic variables of an average target audience member for a given media product based on age, gender, income, ethnicity and interests, that makes them desirable to advertisers and commercial companies.