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Here at The Audience, audience mapping (you probably won’t be surprised to hear) is our bread and butter, and we firmly believe that a clear and focused audience map is the base upon which all other PR and marketing efforts should sit. The more we know and understand our audiences, the more precisely we can offer products and services to suit them, with carefully tailored messaging and content, via the most appropriate channels.
In this month’s ‘importance of’ series, we delve into the world of audience mapping, explore its value to PR and marketing, and offer tips and guidelines to help you get started on your own audience mapping journey. And don’t forget, if you would like our support with your own audience mapping or PR and marketing activity, please get in touch.
Direction of travel
There are many different methods and techniques to assist you in mapping your audience, but all of them broadly aim to help you arrive at one place: to gain clarity on who your different audiences are, how your brand can meet their varying wants and needs, and how best to communicate with each of them.
An audience mapping project can be as surface level, or as in-depth as you like (depending on your time and resources), but we highly recommend dedicating some time to it if you can (say, at the start of a new project, or at the beginning of a new year). This is because, while it can be tempting to think you already know your audiences inside and out (and we don’t doubt that you do), this comprehensive exercise can make everything that comes afterwards (the content and channel planning, for example), so much easier.
Not only that, but audience mapping, if properly fed through to all aspects of the business, can work to strengthen brand loyalty and advocacy among your audiences, and boost brand image and awareness. Plus, the exercise itself can be a useful refresher for your own internal teams.
Building the audience
We like to kick things off by brainstorming as many different audiences as possible. For example, a hotel brand might include, ‘retired couples over 65′ or ‘families with young children’ or ‘young professionals on a spa break’.
Once you have your broad categories, can you make them any more specific? For example, if you know that the ‘retired couples’ audience tend to stay for one night, live locally, and always dine in the restaurant, add this. It’s all useful information. You may have surveys, data capture, market studies, keyword research, social media analysis, and customer testimonials that can help you build a more detailed picture.
And don’t forget about other, less obvious groups, for example, stakeholders, industry bodies and associations, investors, the media, and your employees (if relevant). For each audience, add the specific channels they most often use.
Adding layers
It may help to consider a few key demographic and behavioural aspects to deepen your audience profiles or spark ideas about profiles you may not previously have considered, for example:
Divide and conquer
For this next stage you can rank your audiences in order of most to least important, so that you know which group to concentrate your next marketing spend or campaign on. Or you could segment your audiences via location, gender, age, channel, or any other category that is important to your brand.
If you want to go one step further you can create personas with pictures, names, jobs, hobbies and so on. This can be a useful tool to help visualise your audiences, particularly if you need to share your audience map with your internal or external teams.
You can also divide each group into three more sections: current clients, prospective clients and mass market. This can be helpful if you want to tailor your marketing efforts based on each group’s current relationship with you.
For example, you could offer a ‘refer a friend’ voucher to your loyal customers or ask them for a testimonial or case study in exchange for a discount on their next visit.
Conversely, you may offer a first time buy incentive to prospective clients, or trial a larger-scale ad campaign or competition giveaway to draw people in from the mass market category.
Content and channel planning
The next step is to explore what your product or service can offer each audience segment. What want or need are you addressing with your product or service, and what challenge are you solving for them? How well do you meet their specific needs on service, price, facilities, taking into account their specific demographic and behavioural profiles? Is there anything you could do more of, or better? Are there any untapped areas that would work brilliantly for a particular group? Are there any gaps between what a particular audience expects and what you can currently deliver?
Depending on your objectives and what you would like to achieve – whether the launch of a new product, a brand refresh, or a new campaign, for example – finalising this last stage can help you tailor your offering, hone your message and create compelling content – delivered via the most suitable channels (which you added earlier) – to suit the relevant audience personas.
Your shiny new audience map can help you create a successful marketing strategy and communications plan which is targeted, creative and effective. At The Audience, we conduct audience persona mapping at the beginning of all new client relationships. From a one-off audience mapping consultancy session to ongoing marketing and communications project work, get in touch to discover how we can collaborate with your own marketing team to achieve exceptional results.
