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Audience Analysis & Segments

Vision Statement:

Consider the audience for your campaigns with the intention of guiding your strategic planning

Hey 415! This episode talks about audience segmentation to help you identify who you are targeting with your social media campaigns AND how to actively consider the profile of your audience in your strategic planning.

You can follow along with the slides from Canvas and linked in the description of this episode. The Slido interactive feature will only be available through October 16, 2021.

There is one poll question, the usual way we use Slido in class, and then two prompts for you to submit in the Q&A tab.

Our vision for this lesson is to consider the audience with the intention of guiding our strategic planning. Take a moment now to write a goal you have for this week’s lesson. Remember vision is the framework for your planning and goals are the guiding directions for your decisions and actions. Think of a goal that will help you reach the vision of intentionally considering audience.

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Defining the Audience

3:00 Minutes into Podcast

Audience Segmentation is a process of categorizing your potential community based on specific criteria

Create a profile of your imagined person who really values, needs, and wants the content from your campaign.

Try writing a sentence with that profile based on your vision, goals, and analysis of the audience

In social media, the goal is not to reach every single person on the planet--obviously. Your client and brand will align with SOME people’s interests and SOME people’s needs and SOME people’s niches. It is never a realistic or feasible goal to target “everyone” in a campaign. Instead, we think about who might value from our content, who might contribute to our community, and who could turn into a customer, donor, fan, regular reader, etc.

One way to define our audience is by thinking about the NICHE, or group focused on a specific interest, location, or characteristic. The niche should be clear based on your vision statement for the campaign and some of the goals you have. Once you set up the general niche for your client and campaign-- we go deeper into the audience segmentation as a way to define who we imagine talking to and building a community around.

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We have several important reasons to go through defining who we want to speak to. We can be more effective with any boosted or paid posts because we spend money based on the parameters set, we can plan our voice and content with more intention (science enhancing art), and we can select platforms better.

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Ways to Define the Audience

At a MINIMUM we need to provide key demographics and psychographics in every audience profile we write:

Demographics are age, gender, sex, occupation, race, location, etc. as appropriate

Some campaigns have no need to consider sex or location…. You decide and lead your team in what they need to know about the imagined audience.

Psychographics are attitudes, behaviors, interests, lifestyle, life stage and other motivators in their actions

We can also research and define the type of user (collectors vs. joiners) and metrics for HOW they use the platforms. We often need third-party software or research techniques and access to define advanced social metrics.

We have a lot of data points we could use to define our audiences, and depending on your client or company, you may need to create really detailed profiles. We will talk about how to get super in-depth, but do know that at the very least ALWAYS we need to consider demographics and psychographics within our audience profile statement.

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Demographics = age, gender identity, sex (which is different and impactful, remember the post-partum campaign we reviewed from the CDC? They needed to target people who were pregnant and gave birth..sex… and then target the partners of those individuals which could be different gender identities), occupation, race… etc.

Psychographics = attitudes, behaviors, interests, opinions, lifestyle, life stage, motivators

With those two core aspects, we can write a basic and useful profile for our campaigns. An audience profile might be a statement or two along the lines of we want to connect with athletic and active adults who appreciate the outdoors and the lifestyle of surfing and beach hangouts. This profile is heavily ableist and may be raced or classed--- to be more inclusive: we want to connect with adults who love the beach and want to enjoy the outdoors.

Platform and User Specifics: influence in the network, brand and community loyalty, type of user (creator, collectors, spectators, active joiners). Knowing the user types you are both already working with and want to target will help determine your content… for example an audience of collectors might be better suited for “savable” content like How Tos or platforms with that behavior as a priority like Pinterest.

If you have a established community and the resources to really research and profile for bright spots, then you might want to spend time looking into the metrics of your community and audience segment you want to grow.

Digital behaviors (likes, follows, interests), time spent, day/week most active, word associations, devices used, other brands they connect with, sentiment toward other brands.

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Try writing a profile for your audience

Who do you imagine valuing and reaching the MOST with your campaign project? Try writing 1-2 sentences to describe them.

Ex: we want to resonate with young millennials and old Gen Z just entering the workforce who value working from home but want connection and mentorship from other young professionals. That type of profile would be for a campaign perhaps around building a virtual community and webinar series sponsored by some brand like LinkedIn, perhaps.

Join the Slide at slido.com with #937524

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Write 1-2 sentences to describe your imagined audience for your campaign project.

Join the Slide at slido.com with #937524

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Types of Audience

25:00 Minutes in Podcast

The profile or persona you wrote can then be applied to, expanded, and revised to describe the three core audience types for a campaign.

Primary Audience = first target
Secondary Audience = other positive influencers
Opponents = negative influencers

Once we have a general profile of your most valuable audience is, we can segment them into audience types including communities, influencers, creators, and other users.

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Primary Audience is who we want to target first

Secondary Audience are linked to the primary messages but not necessarily the target. Think of your secondary audience as influential and a bonus but not the focus.

Opponents are negative voices that can influence your primary audience away from your campaign goals. Identify potential opponents through your environmental scan and swot analysis. If you can’t come up with an opponent in the planning, make sure you note and pay attention to any that come up after your campaign launches, and them be on alert for potential crisis (worst case scenario) and for your care strategy. Write these interactions down for your next campaign.

These are the big three types of audience for most every campaign.

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Members within Audience Types

Communities are great to engage with select members of your primary audience with exclusive content that meets a specific need in their connection to your client.

Influencers are professionals on social media who know how to communicate and create connection with a community. We need to ask about their audience alignment, history, costs, and our campaign goals before signing a contract for promotion.

Ambassadors and Creators advocate, promote, or just use your brand for their personal investments and may accept other forms of payment (access, products)

Within the profile of your primary, secondary, and opponents, we can get into membership including community, influencers, and other creators your client might have the resources and interests to engage with.

Communities can be used to engage loyal customers or select members of your primary audience in spaces to brainstorm, interact, and share knowledge. The purpose of the community and who gets to be in the community changes based on your VISION and GOALS, but you should keep key features in mind: Exclusivity, Tone, Consistency, Sustainability

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Influencers are professionals who know how to communicate, engage, and create connection with a community, and can benefit the social media and marketing mix for brands. With influencer marketing, we need to keep in mind that they must disclose partnerships, create relevant content (not just ads), select people who actually align with your client’s mission and goals. When thinking about working with and finding an influencer for your client, answer five questions before writing that contract: Are they engaged, does their audience align with your audience profile, what is their history (crisis alert), can you afford them, what are the goals of the partnership.

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Creators and ambassadors can be helpful too because they advocate for the brand for their own interests. You might naturally get ambassadors or creators around your brand if they are loyal fans or rely on your product: think consistent UGC-- find people who just always engage or retweet. You can also create programs to cultivate this behavior. I love The Sims 4--and they have an EA Game Changers ambassador program where the active and engaged players with social media followings are invited to play new packs early or attend special “Sims Camps” but are not directly paid. They are paid in free game packs and travel expenses.

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Who is an influencer or ambassador for brands you follow?

Influencers are paid sponsors while ambassadors promote your brand through their own work and interests.

Here are my example of the same social media brand (New Rockstars on YouTube)

Influencers for Vessi Shoes. They constantly do sponcon but integrate their own take and perspective on the products.
Ambassadors for Marvel because they review the trailers, films, and shows as part of their interest area but not as direct or paid extensions of Marvel.

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Who is an influencer or ambassador for a brand you follow?

Join the Slide at slido.com with #937524 and use the Q&A Portal.

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Best Practices for Audience

Define your audience by key demographics and psychographics to predict their behavior and inform your strategic planning.

Write your audience profile or persona in 1-2 sentences to help your client and team visualize who the content is speaking towards.

Ex. we speak to X type of person who does Y type of activity and is interested in Z type of content.

Ask yourself what is the overall relevance of the campaign for the audience profiles, both primary and secondary.

Do your research on audience data and try to identify potential ambassadors or influencers.

Set your expectations and guidelines for brand voice ON the data and audience profile you create

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