Know your Audience
Know your Audience
September 17, 2010 by Taylor Studios
, Associate Director of and interpretive guru, spent a day and a half with us honing our skills company-wide. One of the themes throughout our discussion was the importance of knowing your audience. If you want people to care or change their behavior you have to connect with them. The media (e.g. Exhibits, graphics, brochures, presentations or any form of communication) used to connect with a senior citizen versus a 12 year old may be completely different. All people remember stories more than facts.
It is often difficult for us to get a client to commit to a target audience. Many say it is everyone. Often you can spend a day observing their visitors to get a good feel for their true audience. You can then help the client rank the type of people they have predominantly. You may break this down by age (demographics), group type (e.g. Families, couples…) or any number of categories. John Falk uses the following categories: experience seekers, hobbyists/professionals, spiritual pilgrims, facilitators or explorers. Whatever you use, define your audience.
We often struggle with getting clients to write to their audience. Most people who visit museums or parks are going for the experience. Generally, they are not going there to learn. It is a recreational activity. Writing scientific details or lengthy text will not connect with these visitors. Social science says we need to make an emotional connection with our visitors in order to get them to care or to learn. Facts do not create an emotional connection. Writing a story or using humor may help foster a connection. Many of our clients reject humor or stories when we submit our copy. We will have to do a better job of convincing them why it is important to write succinctly with emotional drawstrings.
Some questions to help you narrow down your audience include: What do they need? and What does this audience know about? Many of our clients set a goal to increase visitation. To determine if that is the best goal for them to set, we discuss why they want more visitors. Maybe it would be better for them to focus on better serving the visitors that are already coming to the site. If we hone in on the audience we might be able to get more involvement from the current base of visitors. Just as in business it is easier to maintain current customers than it is to get new ones. Focus on their needs and wants.
Do you know your audience?
“The care of rivers is not a matter of rivers, but of the human heart.” ~Jenaka Shozo