If you’re looking to write or refresh your audience strategy and create a route map to help you connect meaningfully with more people, the following questions are designed to kick-start your thinking and inspire new ideas.
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- Who is our ideal audience?
- Start by recapping / summarising what you know about the people you exist for.
- Describe the ideal audience in line with your vision and aspiration.
- Think about demographics, as well as motivations, interests, and values.
- Where do people look for information about what’s on, who do they listen to, where do they spend time, what do they do in their spare time? etc.
- Why might our ideal audience choose us over all the other options of things they could do or experience?
- How is our story relevant to people’s lives today?
- To what degree are we addressing the things people care about?
- What makes us vital?
- What motivates our ideal audience to get involved?
- Are we targeting arts fans / regular attenders? People who may recognise and get excited about the name of a production, the artist/s, the writers / curators / production company etc.?
- What else might motivate people to look our way? (recap on your answers to the first question, in particular, revisit their values, interests, and motivations)
- What might our target audience want to gain?
- A great night out with friends and family?
- Getting lost in the emotion or drama of a great story?
- Something that captures their imagination or stimulates new ways of thinking and seeing the world?
- A moment to themselves? A moment of peace in a busy week?
- A creative experience? etc.
- What do we wish more people knew about us / our work?
- What might we need to communicate to capture the attention and interest of our ideal audience?
- What expectations do we hope people will have before they attend or get involved?
- How visible are we to our ideal audience?
- Are we visible in the places where people spend time (online and in person)?
- How might we enable people to try us, or to sample our work?
- Before asking them to come to our house (often a daunting prospect if you’ve never been before), we need to meet people where they are.
- How might we show people how incredible our work is and give them a taste of what they might love if they visited in person?
- How might the whole experience (the welcome, the performance, the atmosphere, the bar etc.) become something that people will love?
- How might we create a space and an experience that delivers brilliantly on audience needs and values?
- Becomes somewhere they want to spend time and return again and again?
- Who does our ideal audience listen to and trust?
- Who might we collaborate with, partner with, or ask to talk about us to reach the people we want to connect with?
- Whose voice might influence their decision to try us for the first time?
- What might need to change to deliver brilliantly for our ideal audience?
Discover more ideas to inspire your audience strategy via the Matter More newsletter.
If you’d like to work with me to explore your audience strategy, please get in touch to arrange a time for us to chat and explore how I might help.