Effective communication starts with knowing exactly who needs to hear your message. Taking the time to identify your target audience and segment them into relevant groups can help you tailor information, reduce communication overload, improve engagement and make better decisions about where and how to reach the right people.
The classic “this needs to go to everyone”. But does it really?
The more broadly you define your audience, the harder it becomes to communicate meaningfully and clearly, increasing the risk of your message not reaching the right people.
Who actually needs to know?
We all know the usual top-level audience streams, staff, managers, customers, potential customers, stakeholders, industry, community, prospective employees and the list goes on.
Now that we’ve determined WHAT we’re saying, WHO helps us drill down within these top-level groups to identify the people who really need to know.
You can break down top-level groups like:
- Staff who should receive information about:
- safe handling of cash – frontline staff
- working safely in high/low temperatures – field staff
- update for record management software – finance/HR staff etc.
- Customers who need to receive information about:
- A product recall – the affected customers who purchased the product
- Planned maintenance or outage – customers in that location or affected by that service offering
- A special or event – customers whose interests, location or purchasing behaviour make it relevant
If you sell five different services, every existing customer doesn’t necessarily need to hear about every service. Likewise, every staff member doesn’t need every operational update.
One message doesn't fit all
By drilling down into WHO, rather than relying on a top-level or “everyone” audience category, you can create or tailor your message for the people who actually need it.
By tailoring your message for the right audience, you are more likely to have that audience engage with you or retain the information, which in the noisy world of today, retention and engagement are more important than ever before.
This is where you would have a section in your overarching marketing strategy that would drill your audience down to ensure that you are using demographic information wisely and segmenting audiences based on their interests and behaviours.
Side note: Read up about psychographics if you ever get a chance… Very interesting.
Demand the right attention
Adapting your message to the right audience can deliver more benefits over the long term than you may realise and help you attract the right attention from the right people.
Some of the benefits could be:
- Less information overload, reducing the risk that your messaging is ignored.
- Reducing unsubscribes from newsletters if you segment audiences properly.
- Improve the likelihood of sales or offer uptake.
- Build stronger brand relevance and reputation with the audiences that matter.
I’m sure you get the gist by now.
Once you know WHO really needs to receive your message, the next question is WHERE are you most likely to reach them?
And no, the answer isn’t automatically social media.
This article is part of The Adaptive Approach insight series.