How to Develop an Audience Strategy for Your Organization
A mere 42% of organizations know the basic demographic information of their target audience, like their name, gender, and location, according to a recent Hubspot article.
Wait! What?
While taking these types of studies with a grain of salt is important, they reflect what I’ve observed in partnering with organizations across industries over the past 15 years.
More often than not, organizations simply don’t know who their target audiences are. And when you consider that demographics are just one layer in the onion that is your audience (don’t forget psychographic information and behavioral insights), organizations are quite literally flying blind.
This means their marketing and communications work is more grounded in broad best practices than in what will move the needle for their specific goals.
If Developing an Audience Strategy Were Easy, Every Organization Would Have One
When setting out to develop an audience strategy, go in with your eyes wide open. This is hard stuff - there’s a reason so many organizations fail to follow through.
The best approach starts by understanding the challenges that come with developing your strategy so you’re prepared to face them head-on.
What to know before developing your audience strategy:
Get ready to get into the weeds. Solid audience development practices require keen attention to detail. Get ready to get into the weeds as you mine and analyze your data. Even with an organized audience list, developing audience segments can feel like an uphill and time-consuming battle.
Technology is your friend. You need a technology-supported system to keep things organized. Think CRM or even a good old-fashioned spreadsheet to manage segments.
Scrubbing lists and qualifying existing audiences is a must. So, you’ve got a big long list of names. That’s great! But if you have an email address for one contact, a phone number for another, and a haphazard list of mailing addresses scattered across your spreadsheet, you have some work to do.
A part of that work is scrubbing that list of names. If you have contacts who’ve been on your list for what seems like forever or names you don’t recognize, qualify those contacts to determine if they’re a viable contact moving forward.
Assign an audience manager. When it comes to audience strategy at your organization, who’s on first? At lots of nonprofits I work with, the development department is managing those donor lists pretty effectively. But all organizations, even nonprofits, have more than just donor lists to manage.
Don’t be afraid to ask direct questions. Putting out a survey to existing audiences is a relatively straightforward exercise, but organizations are fearful of bothering people more than they have to. Noble, I suppose, but if your audiences had the choice of being served relevant information from you or being blasted with any old thing, my hunch is they’d opt for relevance every time.
Despite Common Perceptions, Developing an Audience Strategy is Easier Than You May Think
Developing an audience strategy can seem overwhelming at first. But the basic building blocks don’t have to steal large sums from your budget or take your team away from other important tasks.
Here’s how to develop an audience strategy for your organization.
Step 1: Identify the broad audiences most essential to your goals.
Start by identifying the three audiences most critical to the success of your organization. Who are they? Be specific. Details matter when you’re building an audience profile. The more you understand about each audience, the better and more accurately you can market and drive results.
The best way to get started is by pulling in a small team of your counterparts within your organization closest to your audiences. Your leadership team should have a seat at the table, but staff and volunteers who regularly interact with existing audiences understand them better than anyone.
Step 2: List the steps you can take to shore up processes and responsibilities.
My advice to every organization is to keep things simple by giving clear direction to your team. Create a list of steps to guide your team from start to finish. Then assign someone to manage the process. Without a dedicated team member owning your audience strategy development, the effort will struggle to get off the ground.
Step 3: Harness the information you have.
Your team members likely have organizational knowledge to apply to these audiences. Take each audience segment and detail what you know about them. Then layer on what you think you know and list additional questions.
Step 4: If you don’t know, ask.
Set up audience interviews or distribute surveys to learn more about your segments. The easiest way is to survey your existing audiences. To reach new audiences, consider focus groups or survey services that send surveys based on your defined broad audiences. General online research is also a highly effective tool.
When creating your questions, develop discussion guides or survey questionnaires that affirm or refute your assumptions and invite answers to your most pressing questions.
Step 5: Connect with your audiences.
Once you’ve identified a specific target audience, it’s time to understand how your organization can fulfill their wants and needs and start making connections.
Pay particular attention to how your audiences want to hear from you; do they prefer email communication or connecting on social media? Or perhaps good old-fashioned phone calls?
Meet them where they are with what it is you have to offer and you’ll provide tremendous value.
Step 6: Consider engaging an expert.
Some organizations have talent in-house to take on this work themselves. However, inviting an expert with a point of view about how to make the most of your audience efforts or who has access to additional tools and information may be a valuable investment.
It’s Time to Dive In and Develop Your Audience Strategy
When you make time to develop your audience strategy, marketing and communications efforts fall into place in much more meaningful ways. By following the steps above, you’ll avoid the common pitfalls of strategy development. And if you’re looking for guidance or support as you develop your audience strategy, we’re always here to help.
Happy strategizing!
Amanda
About The Author
Amanda Forr, the founder of Element A, has built a career dedicated to the idea that carefully chosen words are meaningful and can drive progress. As a writer, editor, and strategist, Amanda transforms research and data findings into actionable insights and strategic plans. She also tells stories, bringing voices and perspectives to light in authentic and insightful ways.