Defining an Audience

Emily Shaw

Quantitative Research • Quantitative research is more structured data that can be easily organized into categories due

to the data being less opinionated than qualitative data is usually collected from surveys and experiments to produce exact conclusions which fit the majority rather than having a wide variety of answers the audience is given options to choose from. Quantitative research is very useful as it can help give a more definite result due to the results being based on numbers and percentages. As well as this quantitative research is helpful for getting answers to show how many people do certain things as this kind of research doesn’t give as much space for people to give a more in depth opinionated response, its simply facts and figures. There are 2 major companies in this area of research which are NRS (The National Readership Survey) who create the socio-economic breakdowns of specific audiences and help support the print media industry by estimating circulation and readership to give magazines and newspapers the information on their audiences to help them provide for their specific audiences. Another company that do this type of research is ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations) and they collect the facts and figures from audience numbers for digital formats and print formats which is very helpful for media produces to know who their audience is. However a downfall of quantitative research is that the results you get don’t include anyone's reasoning's behind their choices and are very generalized facts and figures.

Qualitative Research • Qualitative research is formed from doing interviews with people, focus groups

and observations to find more detailed answers. As well as this from qualitative research the answers/replies you get are a lot more opinionated and can help give reasoning behind their choices rather than one set answer. Qualitative data is generally more subjective conclusions formed from looking at a wide range of data also by carrying out this type of research it means you have a greater understanding of your audience, as well as this from this type of research you learn more about the type of person that makes up your audience for example this information will tell you more about the persons likes and dislikes, their interests and who they are. As this is a more detailed way of collecting responses it takes a lot longer than to collect data from quantitative as you have to individually speak to people face to face if you carrying out interviews and if you carry out focus groups this still takes a lot longer as you will need to collect a lot more opinionated responses and is a lot harder to achieve a clear summary when there are no designated answers. This is very useful way of collected a lot of information on a small group of people to find out more specifically about them rather than just blocks of simple facts and figures.

Socio-economic Status• There are many types of audience profiling one key way is by measuring an individuals or families

socio- economic status, this is measured by the person or families economic position and social position.

• Socio-economic status is based on three key factors which are an individuals income, occupation and education.

• The NRS are again one of the main companies who measure socio-economic status, and to do this they have 6 categories which are used to help define the readers of UK newspapers and magazines. A households social grade is based on the head of the households occupation.

• How much a product should cost also coms from this information as the higher the economic status for example A and B class then generally the product will be more expensive as they usually have the money to afford a higher priced product.

• The standard of writing and content of a magazine or newspaper will depend on who it is aimed at, if the product has a high standard of writing it will generally be aimed at ABC1 as it is more likely that they would be able to understand the type of language they are using as its more likely that they’ve had a higher level of education as the socio-economic status will combine a persons education, class and background which helps magazines and newspapers word their articles according to the audience they are wanting to appeal to. An example of this is Vogue as it is aimed at the higher classes such as AB as it has a higher price point and the way it is written and presented generally looks to be a higher quality, whereas a magazine like OK would be aimed more towards the lower classes as it has a lower price point and the way its written is more like a gossip magazine and also the layout of the cover featuring adverts and competitions is more aimed towards C2DE.

Psychographics • Psychographics is more to do with an audiences personality, attitudes, interests, values and lifestyle

rather than age, gender, race and location like demographics is based of of. The information for psychographics is generally collected from doing questionnaires and interviews to find more out about a person rather than just facts and figures. There are a lot of benefits that come from knowing about your audience and the people who are buying your products, as by knowing more about the people buying them you can pin point specific things they like and dislike to make a product more tailored for their audience and how to improve a product to make it directly suitable for their audience.

• To make psychographics easier to generalize and select a specific type of person, there are varying tables which contain a name for a type of person and a small description about what type of person they are. An example of how this works is that generally older people would fit into the ‘resigned’ category as these type of people are described as rigid, strict, oriented to the past. Whereas young people and students are more likely to fit into the explorer category which is more described as energy, challenge and adventure.

• Your psychographics can also be inked in with socio- economic status as well, this is because a job or stage of life, can link you to a specific personality type and can link one small detail about a persons life to a personality trait in the categories.

Geodemographics • The geographics of a person comes from the national census, the information from the census is

helpful for advertising companies to target certain audiences as generally people living in the same place tend to have quite similar lifestyles and generally tend to spend similar amounts so it helps companies target to right audiences. This information will also help people target the right sorts of people with the right sorts of products for that area, as this information will tell you if a certain areas is full of students, or families or retired couples and this helps marketing companies to target.

• The benefits of geodemographics is that it helps advertisement know where to advertise what for, as certain places will contain more of the lower socio-economic status and therefore helps people tailor their marketing for specific areas to suit the type of people living there, for example it stops very expensive products like BMW cars being advertised in a place where generally people don’t have that much money to spare at the end of the month meaning that that area will most likely not be able to afford the products that are being advertised.

• Generally people living in the same area have similar spending habits meaning that companies can target areas to fit there needs, for example advertisement for pay day loans will more likely to be sent to areas where people generally people don’t have a lot of money to spend at the end of the month, and advertisement for expensive cars may be more likely to go to an area which has a higher socio-economic status as they can afford to buy the more luxurious products.

Age• When classifying an audience age is key feature as there are a lot of things that would be

aimed to an audience in their 20’s that what would be sent to an audience in their 70’s and visa-versa. Although making statements about age groups won’t apply to everyone within that age group, it will apply to the majority, meaning it isn't always the most effective way of classifying an audience, however it is still very simple and important to do when selecting a target audience.

• Age is important when defining an audience as it helps to give more generalized information on your audience as it makes it easier to apply the majority to, even if it doesn’t fit everyone. It makes it easier to aim products at a wider audience which are more likely to fit a wide range of people with vague similarities across a large group of people. Also age helps give a more generalized idea of the type of person you are targeting as you can alter the language and the way a product looks to fit a certain age group, for example if you were aiming a product at teenagers you may choose to use more casual and informal text rather than if you were aiming for 50-70 year olds you would possibly use more formal text to fit the type of people you would be aiming at.

• At the start of a project the age range specified may be more broad and fit a lot more people, but later on during the final stages the target audience will become more defined.

Gender• Gender is one of the simplest ways to classify an audience, however classifying an audience

by their gender comes with risks of stereotyping although by producing gender neutral products helps avoid this. By finding out your audiences gender it can help you make products which are more likely to directly appeal to them, this is because men and women generally will have different personal values and hobbies which therefore makes it easier for companies to specifically target a gender. It would be very challenging to target both male and females general interests as its likely that they will be very different which makes it easy for companies to aim at a specific gender rather than a general idea to make the products work for both male and female. However one downfall of advertising to one gender is that it can push the other gender away if its too overly gender specific, for example there may be an advertisement that contains lots of pink and ‘girly’ look to the advertisement meaning that it may push away the majority of male audiences even if the product being advertised is gender neutral if an advert was too overly feminine it may deter the male audience from purchasing the product you are advertising. Predominantly in children's toys there are pinks and purples used for toys aimed at girls and blues and greens for toys aimed at boys which can sometimes cause stereotyping issues as it promotes the old fashioned ideals of males and females from a young age.

Mainstream and Niche• Products that are aimed at a mainstream audience aim to target a larger audience and fit more of the majority,

this is things such as large blockbuster films and chart music. By aiming at a mainstream audience means your target audience is a lot larger as it will be a lot more popular to fit a larger group of people. For example pop music fits the majority and is what's most popular to a lot of people. By selecting to target a mainstream audience you are looking at a broader range of people as there are a wider variety of people that you are trying to suit. The benefits of a mainstream audience is that there is a more generic formula for how to suit this type of audience as you can already see the type of products that are popular with this group of people and what things sell well across that audience.

• The opposite of mainstream audiences are niche audiences which is a much smaller audience but have a lot more specific interest. By targeting a niche audience you have more of a chance of selling to the majority of that audience as there is a lot fewer people within niche audiences than in mainstream ones.

• As well as having mainstream and niche music an films there are also mainstream and niche magazines such as cosmopolitan magazine and niche magazines such as rock sound magazine which is targeted more towards an audience that enjoy a specific type of music.

• However also within the mainstream audience there are some downfalls, as mainstream covers the majority its unlikely that the audience will be divided on a product, its more likely that a product will either become very popular among this audience or just flop and have n ones interest within that group. An example of mainstream is pop music like Justin Bieber and Calvin Harris which fit the majority of people who follow popular trends and mainstream music, whereas there are more niche artists like Modern Baseball and Boston Manor which wouldn’t be enjoyed by a mainstream audience but have a dedicated niche audience which follow more alternative music that wouldn’t be classed as popular.