Sunderland Culture- Audience research and profiling

 Audience Research and Profiling

This document explains my target audience in detail though means of demographics, psychographics and social grade. Hopefully my explanations will give a better idea of who I'm trying to target and why, detailing exactly where I have chosen each group and how effective it would be to target them over other groups where relevant. There are also tables to help refer to exactly what group I mean, but some of these may be subject to change when I get more responses to my survey on Google Forms. 


Psychographics


My target audience is likely to be mainly a mix of mainstreamers and explorers. This is because this is the groups that are most likely to be part of an active audience with my product- they may be influenced by what I make to actually make an effort to find out more about their family history. Explorers are mentioned to be interested in individualism, of which heritage could play a big part in. The seek discovery, so this really appeals to this particular group. Mainstreamers, as the biggest and most common group may also find this interesting and find it more interesting than perhaps other groups would. For example, I don’t think it would appeal to reformers in particular as they prefer independent judgement and may not be open to being encouraged to do something- and for my brief I need my audience to be encouraged to think about the question 'Who Am I'. 

 

 

Demographics


Demographics can be defined as particular target of that of age, gender, religion, ethnic background, class, sexual orientation, occupation, education etc. 

For this project, I’m not aiming to target any particular race /religion /sexual orientation or ethnicity. Though at the moment I am not looking to target a particular gender, I am aware this could be subject to change when I get my google form results back- this may show that one gender may be more interested in my project than the other in which case I could change my target to mainly one gender. 
 

Age, occupation and education level did remain relevant. The client had actually asked for the project to be targeting 16-25 year olds so I will be implementing this into my own project. Following on with this, it means that my audience is most likely to be or had previously attended college or some form of education higher than school level, meaning that this was also relevant to my demographics. Furthermore, there may be a presence of university students as they also fit into this age category, hence the ‘and above’. Class is explored more in my ‘social grade’ section. 

 

 

Social Grade


My main target social grade is band ‘E’. This is because this is the majority social grade of students which is a direct result of my target audience age category. Some of them may fall into category D/C2, likely in the higher ages of the target audience but for the majority will be E. Students who have a part time job or even non-students with a full-time job may well bump up the social grade, so I can target them as well and not fully focus solely on E band. 

 

As my project is on heritage, this mostly appeals to a higher social grade according to heritage related websites. However, these were taken from paid services which would explain why most of their audience has a lot of disposable income. To counteract this, my product is free to view and finding out more about your heritage can be free too and so doesn’t automatically mean that grade E/D wouldn’t find any interest in it. Furthermore, it shows that I may have to go around my project in a different way to really make sure I grab the attention of my target audience. Some of my early ideas on this subject is suggesting ways people could find out about their heritage that are free or cheap, it doesn’t always have to be DNA testing and online tracing to find out about family. Simply asking grandparents could be much, much more effective for example. 




NME Style Profiling

Sources for my audience profiling:


https://www.marketwatch.com/story/7-things-you-need-to-know-about-generation-z-2021-01-29





Hobbies and interests of my target audience are included. 


Mainstreamers follow the latest trends and are part of the most popular group of people. Therefore, as part of my target audience, they may be interested in things like TikTok, social media, mobile phones, betting, Netflix and social justice/human rights. Due to the age category I was given, this is appropriate to the age and also hence why the student lanyard is included as a lot of them will be attending college or university. This age category is also typical of the 'explorer' psychographics, who seek individualism and discovery, hence the magnifying glass that represents this. They may also part take in trends. I'm hoping that they may find an interest in my project but further research may need to be done on how exactly I can target and succeed at reaching that particular audience. Overall, this NME style profile is all quite typical of the older Gen Z group of people- the youngest age group of Gen Z are currently 7 years old and so it may be an idea to research how to reach particular ages rather than generations and this could be very different on both ends of the spectrum. 




Google Forms survey results


Sample size: 15 responses


https://www.slideshare.net/SophieGibson9/audience-survey-analysis-250484327



 



To conclude


Audience research has allowed me to deepen my understanding of what sort of categories my own target audience falls under.  My own research has also allowed me to gain a better perspective as to what kind of thing people are looking for in my proposed project and also who would be most interested in it. This was also my 'go ahead' for the project as a majority of the responses were positive and showed interest in seeing an end result. 

Alongside my survey research, I also conducted some research using the internet to find out more about people my age and what kind of thing may appeal to them that i can include. For example, finding out what demographic most of them may fall under. This research was both written and put into a NME style audience profile. This really allowed me to visualise the collective interests of my target audience age group. I could use this in things such as intertextuality in order to appeal to them more. 













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