3 ways to focus on what your audience needs right now
One of the first questions I ask when I work with clients is always: who do you need to speak to? An uplifting thing to remember about communications is that everything you produce is to benefit other people. We need to understand who your audience is, and what they need, before we get our content, messages and tactics right. In times of crisis, this is even more important.
Even if you’ve not had to pivot your delivery during the pandemic, your audience – and what they need and how they are acting - may have changed or be in the process of changing. The three questions below will help you to have another look at your audience. You may have asked yourself these questions before in the past, but you may it useful to revisit them.
Can you break your target audience down into groups?
We can’t speak to everyone all the time. Trying to do that at the moment will be harder than ever, and we can’t afford to waste time and effort doing so. It’s more than likely that you have multiple audiences with different expectations about how they want to engage with you. Breaking your audience down into different groups or ‘segments’ will help you focus on what they need.
Rather than just the traditional groupings of geography and demographics, think about breaking your audience down by their attitudes or behaviours. Segments of your audience might be those who regularly use your services, those who are engaging with someone else at the moment, and those who aren't even aware of your work. You might have segments of people that are really aligned with your interests, and those who you need to engage more. Your segments should be distinct and easy to distinguish from each other.
2. What problem can you help your audience(s) to solve now?
In a period of information overload and fatigue, we all need to be careful to explain how we are making a difference and solving the problem that your audience is facing now. Do you have any intelligence – from your own website analytics or other sources – that demonstrates what they are looking for at the moment? What search terms are they using to find you online? I’ve recently found AnswerThePublic useful. It analyses the latest autocomplete data from search engines like Google and then visually shows every useful phrase and question people are asking around your keywords.
3. What is motivating your audience(s) at the moment?
Understanding your audiences’ motivation will mean you understand what will drive them to take the action you need. Have you reviewed what they think and believe about your organisation or campaign at the moment? What encourages them to engage with you? What do they care about?
During this difficult time, we hear a lot about communicating our own organisational values (which is really important and visible values matter) but it’s also valuable to consider your audience's values. Do your audience care about tradition? Do they want to make things better for themselves? For their community? For the planet? Understanding your audience in terms of their values is especially important when they are different to yours. If you're driven by freedom and creativity, your messaging might not land with someone whose life satisfaction comes from security.
Gaining more audience insight is a proactive step to manage this time of crisis
As we live through this time of isolation and crisis, we know that our audiences need empathy and care. We’ve seen the headlines when big businesses have failed to walk the talk on caring about their staff and customers. Seven in ten of us say that if we perceive a brand is putting profit over people during this pandemic, we will lose trust in that brand forever.
The more you can dig into the profile of your audience, the more you can deepen your understanding of how you can help them, what message will land with them best, and which ways will be the most effective in getting that message across. The more insight you have, the more you can focus all your hard work in the right place.