Three simple questions you should ask about your audiences
Written by Zoe Alexis Whitehorn
Earlier this year, we asked you to share the skills you're most focused on building in 2022.
Many of you said that you'd like to do more around audience analysis for communications planning. You want to gain a better understanding of your audiences' values, motivations and their pain points – ultimately setting the stage for an effective campaign.
So, we put together an easy three question checklist to get you started on smart audience analysis.
The headline? Fresh, credible and comprehensive data on who your audiences are, what they care about and how you can reach them is the secret sauce of any successful campaign.
✔ Identify Your Most Important Audiences
Ask yourselves: Who is your audience, really?
One of the very first steps to any strong communications plan is identifying your most important audiences. Many of our partners have multiple, specific audiences they're trying to engage for a given campaign, many of whom have different priorities and relationships to their work. So, for example, this might include existing funders, potential donors, peers and partner organizations; community advocates and organizers; state or federal policymakers and more.
Here are a few things to consider when determining who you’re trying to engage and what you’ll empower them to do:
Who are the decision makers? Who has the power to say yes or no to our issue? Can we reach them directly?
If we can’t directly reach the person who has the power to say yes or no to our idea (i.e., if you somehow don’t have a direct line to President Biden), who has the ear of the person with the yes or no power (can you target a cabinet member or senior leader in the administration instead)? Do we have access to them? If not, how can we get it?
If your campaign includes a media component, who are you trying to reach by speaking through the media?
Who is impacted by your project and how will you make sure they’re intentionally and meaningfully included?
Then, dig into data on those audiences’ demographics. Learning as much as you can about demographics is an important foundational step in getting to know your audiences and building a profile of who they really are.
And, consider this a PSA, friends: Although it may be awfully tempting, remember that there is no such thing as the general public when it comes to strategic communication.
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✔ Get to know what makes your audiences tick. Learn about their priorities and motivations.
Ask yourselves: What do your audiences care most about, and what keeps them up at night?
In comms jargon (not beloved by Forthright, of course), people often refer to this piece of audience research as learning audiences’ “values and barriers.”
But, let's make it simpler than that. When you set out to research your audiences, here’s what you’re really looking to deeply understand:
What matters most to them? For example, can you draw authentic connections between their priorities and your issue that give you a way to tap into what they care most about?
What motivates them to act?
What stands in the way of them taking an action you want them to take? For example, are they busy or feeling issue fatigue – and clarity and specific solutions might boost their engagement?
Use credible and up-to-date research to help you build out this layered understanding of your audiences. This helps you figure out how you can create relevant, resonant messaging that evokes the feeling you want or inspires the action you want.
✔ Determine where your audiences are and how they might interact with you or engage with your materias.
Ask yourselves: Where can you most easily and effectively reach your audiences?
For the final item in our Must Do Checklist, carefully consider how your audiences can be most easily reached. For example, if you’re trying to increase your donor base among millennial parents in your community, you’ll need to meet them where they are, literally and figuratively. Research shows you can reach millennial parents through specific online engagement, like on Facebook. To build connections with this audience, speak to the values they care most about, like clearly demonstrating your organization’s impact.
Or, maybe you engage most directly with your audiences through in-person community events, and you'll need to think through what sort of materials, messengers and messaging you can bring to those settings to mobilize your community.
Itching to learn more and connect all the pieces of a communications plan to audience analysis? Check out our Fail-Proof Guide to Nonprofit Communications Campaigns, a free go-at-your-own-pace series.
P.S. Take a look at this brief resource for more on how to break down your most important target audiences.
