Taking an audience perspective

How often do you get so caught up in doing the doing and forget who you are doing it for?

• You write content that you know will get approved by the executive.
• You get so nervous during a presentation that you talk in jargon and use technical details.
• You need to get community input. You organise a workshop at your office at 10am because that’s where you work and when you’re available.
• You’re so focused on the outcome that you forget who you’re speaking to.

No matter how long you have worked in communications, we all fall into this trap at one point or another. We get caught up in our own world, so busy that we just need to tick that job off our list.

We forget the audience.

Let’s talk about a few tools we can use to bring our focus back to the audience during those busy times. You don’t need to take hours of planning. Grab a cup of tea and spend ten minutes to bring your focus back to the people you are trying to reach.

Empathy map

An empathy map is a visual tool to gain deeper insights into a target audience by exploring their thoughts, feelings, actions, and experiences.

Typically, you break down information into what the audience says, thinks, feels, and does, helping to better understand the motivations and pain points of the people you are speaking to.

Empathy maps are useful because they foster a human-centred approach to problem-solving, ensuring that communications resonate with the real needs and emotions of the audience. This leads to more effective and user-focused outcomes.

This can be a 5 minute activity or a 30 minute activity. You can do it on your own or with your team. Don’t overthink it. Just get your initial ideas out, and then you can always research your unknowns later.

Personas

Audience personas are semi-fictional profiles representing different segments of a target audience based on data and research about real people.

Each persona typically includes demographic details, goals, challenges, behaviours, and motivations, giving you a picture of the diverse needs and preferences of the audience.

Personas are useful because they help you tailor your messaging, content, and channels to a person rather than a broad group, making your communications more relevant.

This can be done on your own or by brainstorming in a group, and you can spend 5 minutes or 30.

When you have a persona, find a picture that suits the description and stick it on your desk or around the office to keep returning to it when preparing your communication or engagement activities. When I was in house, we were trying to reach farmers, so we had Bob. A picture of a guy on a tractor was stuck around the office and helped keep us focused on what Bob needed.

Example of a persona template

Go deeper

When trying to figure out your audience, the best way you can do it is to stop making assumptions and get some data. Here are some resources we love when doing audience profiling:

• Australian Bureau of Statistics
• Digital Media Report
• Nielson or Roy Morgan
• Think with Google
• Australia post research reports
• Australian Media and Communications Authority
• Your own Google or social media analytics

Need some help mapping your audiences. We can run a audience analysis workshop or develop personas for you. Give us a call!