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How media producers define their target audience

Media producers have several different methods and techniques that they use to define their target audience. Knowing you’re target audience is a crucial part of marketing, branding and distributing a product. Without knowing you’re target audience, projects can lose their sense of direction and end up tailored to whatever the creators consider a good product.

It is crucial when creating an advert to remember that research must be conducted to find the best possible time and place for broadcasting, there are several things to consider and they are age of audience, gender of audience, where they live and what they like to do in their free time.

If this type of research is not conducted before broadcasting then the advertising campaign can potentially completely fail, if you were to show an advert for a drum and bass CD at midnight on a cooking channel you would sell a fraction of the amount you would if you showed it on channel four around nine.

Once I find out all the basic information on my target audience I can begin looking into what jobs they do and how much money they earn , which could help my with marketing and planning out the price of my product. Different jobs fall into different occupational classifications.

Here is a link to the official standard classification for the UK

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/classifications/current-standard-classifications/index.html

Channel four aims alot of its programming towards young people beetween 15 and 30 , with programs such as Skins , Misfits , facejacker etc etc . . . This is the exact same demographic that I am going to be trying to sell my product to , therefore I think channel four would be the ideal place for me to broadcast my advert.

Method	Is the method suitable	Reason for answer
Surveys	Yes	Yeah surveys would give me a rough outline of what my target audience want and need.
Questionnaires	Yes	Questionnaires would give me specific opinions and in depth answers relevant to the production of my film.
Online forums	Yes	Online forums would give me opinions from people that are really interested in film and will give helpful answers.
Interviews	Yes	Interviews would allow me to have an in depth conversation with somebody from my target audience.
Focus Groups	Partially	Most information gathered can also be gathered with the methods previously mentioned.
Online Ratings	Partially	Most information gathered can also be gathered with the methods previously mentioned.
Magazine Reviews	Partially	Most information gathered can also be gathered with the methods previously mentioned.

 

Quantitive research is the most common aspect of research that media producers are likely to use, this involves critically analysing TV viewing figures using sites such as www.barb.co.uk, radio research is typically gathered via websites such as www.rajar.co.uk and media performance sites such as www.abc.org.uk provide you with a whole different range of figures and analytics from various different media platforms.

Quantitive research is mainly used by well established companies as small businesses cannot afford to advertise via television and radio.

Qualitive research is research gathered through things such as questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, meetings and other face to face scenarios with the target audience. Questionnaires tend to be the most popular method of gathering research when it comes to Qualitive research and this is because it simple, often fairly quick and can easily be done on a wide scale.

 

Socio-economic status recent studies from the BBC have shown that demographics can be broken down into seven different social classes’ e.g. poor people and rich people watch

“The BBC teamed up with sociologists from leading universities to analyse the modern British class system. They surveyed more than 161,000 people and came up with a new model made up of seven groups. To find out where you fit in use this calculator below”

There are many different audience categories in which a member of your demographic can fall under, these will include things like profession, income , gender , location , hobbies , religion , marital status , sexuality , ethnicity , behaviour and many more categories. There are several different things that companies in media will use to collect and gather this information some of the most popular are surveys, questionnaires, interviews, online forums, magazine reviews, online reviews and audience panels. If the information gathered by any of the previously mentioned things is considered to be relevant and useful it falls under the category primary if it’s considered relevant but not that important it becomes secondary information.

Phsycographics are fairly similar to demographics , physcographics puts people into various different boxes and then research is done into how each different type of person reacts with media they encounter on a daily basis.

Once you know what kind of people are intrested in you’re media product , you can start to use this information to influence a whole manner of decisions you make within they company e.g. happy people like bright , uplifting and cheerful advertising and a way more likely to enage with colourful eye catching advertisments

Geo-demographics put people into catagories based on their location , how much money they make in a year , how many cars they own , how old the head of the house is and various other characteristics.

Different parts of the country tend to enjoy different programmes , radio shows , websites and music so gathering geo-demographic research is crucial as you can figure out where the best place to base you’re advertising campaign in order to gather some publicity for a product or company.

Demographics but people into different categories based on the most basic of information for example age , income , education and job status. This information is the most useful research that you can gather about you’re target audience as it enables you to put your’e self in a similar mindset as the people youre selling youre product too , this in turns helps you customise the product to suit their specific needs.