Strategy, Audience Growth & Training for Communications Teams

• What is Audience Development?
• The most common mistakes made by organisations
• How do I Get to Know My Audience?
• Aligning Content to My Audience’s Needs 
• Creating a Data-driven Audience Development Culture

What is Audience Development?

In the ‘90s, when the Web was still young, pioneers over-used a phrase – ‘If you build it,  they will come”. The line was from the 1989 Kevin Costner film ‘Field of Dreams’. And it struck a chord during the headlong rush towards e-commerce. But, as the dotcom crash showed, it was plain wrong.

Source: Everyday Concepts

If you build something, you obviously increase the odds ‘they’ will come; because you’ve got something they will potentially find attractive. But you certainly don’t guarantee they will find it, let alone like it. That’s where the notion of audience development comes from – if you build it, then don’t just wait for them to come – get out there and find an audience. 

Most teams now understand that creating content is not enough – it must be promoted actively. The bit that many miss is that content also needs to be targeted. It’s a circular thing.

Audience Development is sometimes confused with Marketing, and there are obvious overlaps. Like much in digital media, the distinction is best understood by thinking about intent:  Marketing tends to be short-term and transactional – presenting something to the market in the quest for revenue; Audience Engagement tends to be longer-term – it’s more about building relationships and loyalty. 

The Most Common Mistakes Made by Organisations

Digital content is a complex and ever-changing field and it’s hard to keep up with online tastes and behaviour. But stepping back a bit, there are five drivers of engagement that are fundamental and which, in my experience, are something of a blindspot for many organisations:

1. Users want to get things done. They are intolerant of organisations who don’t frame their content accordingly. If you want to build an audience, put that audience’s needs first. Unless you have money for promotion. Even then, use audience-focused content.
2. The web is noisy: Impatience is a virtue online, so you need to make a good first impression if you want to stop users from scrolling on by.
3. ‘Skimmability’: People don’t read, they scan. Structure your content to recognise this. 
4. Relatability: People make snap judgments about your intent, they scrutinise your digital body language for signals of trustworthiness, and are super-sensitive to signs you will waste their time.
5. Mobile-centricity: You produce mostly on desktops but your users are mostly on mobiles – that’s a complication that can’t be ignored.  
6. We’re a visual species. Visual content isn’t the icing on the cake, it is the cake. Make it the first thing you think about, not the last. Bake visual-first into your processes.
7. Deep down, you already know what works. You’re instinctively good at parsing the deluge of digital content. The trick is to reverse-engineer those instincts at work.

For many, these will seem obvious. Just think about your own use of the Web. But I know from first-hand experience that they are all too easily forgotten under the stresses of creating content. And that includes by many of the world’s top digital publishers. 

How Do I Get to Know My Audience? 

As an exercise at the World Economic Forum, we looked at all the readily available audience data – Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, YouTube Studio etc. – and came up with a profile of a typical user – a very crude ‘user persona’. Based on the most common attributes across the platforms, she was under 25, university-educated, involved in voluntary activities, and lived in Pakistan. 

That amalgam was a surprise to many on the team. And, of course, audience members fitting that specific description were a tiny percentage of the total. But it proved an incredibly helpful device for focusing content and packaging on the needs of a real audience.

Organisations that outperform online are inquisitive about their audiences. They have worked out that success comes from aligning their goals with audience needs, And that inevitably prompts curiosity about what makes the audience tick. 

There are broadly three ways of looking at your audience:

1. Demographics: Standard ways of analysing individuals – things like age, gender, income, location, and education. 
2. Psychographics delve into the audience’s interests, attitudes, values, and lifestyles. These aren’t standardised like demographics and harder to establish. 
3. Behavioural: Existing users differ in terms of loyalty and engagement. By looking closely at your engagement data, can you see different groups of users? Frequent site users? Most popular posts? Superfans on Social?

How do the platforms work out demographics and psychographics?

Google’s business model requires it to show you relevant content and ads. It uses cookies to monitor users’ web behaviour to estimate demographics and psychographics from this behaviour. Behavioural data comes from Google Analytics.

However, most ad-blockers block Google Analytics. Estimates of how many people use ad-blockers range widely – some say it’s more than half. Whatever the fraction, Google Analytics under-reports usage. 

Social networks like Facebook also depend on advertising. Demographic data comes from direct questions to users when setting up accounts. This data is regarded as reliable enough to be used in social research. 

Psychographic data comes from behaviour on the platform and analysis of sites that use the Facebook Pixel. Note that more than a quarter of users surveyed by Pew Research Centre said the site’s classifications did not accurately represent them.

The data limitations from digital platforms mean that many teams do independent research. The advent of online survey tools has made this simple to do. Those with the time and budgets may also look to interview users directly.

One of the challenges of surveys,  whether online or in person, is avoiding sampling bias. These are the most common biases and suggestions on mitigating them:

1. Non-representative sampling is the risk that you only get responses from a particular audience segment. 

There are two main varieties. First, you don’t alert the entire audience to the survey; perhaps you just send it out in a newsletter rather than promote it across social media and your website. 

The second is that the burden of filling out your survey is too much for all but your fans. In this case, offering some kind of reward and avoiding too many open-ended questions can help improve response rates.

2. Agreement or acquiescence bias: This is the risk that respondents tell you what they think you want to hear and err on the side of positivity. Leading questions are an absolute no-no. Also, avoid Yes/No answers and offer multiple choices:

Example

Question: Was this article useful?

Options: Yes, No

Question: Please rate this article

Options: 1 – Bad,  2 – Poor, 3 – Neutral, 4 – Good, 5 – Excellent

In the end, audience research is more of an art than a science, and the most effective teams use a blended approach, constantly test hypotheses, and eventually get a feel for what their audience and audience segments really like. 

Quantity versus Quality: How Do I Get the Audience I Want? 

Many teams get sucked into the ‘numbers game’ – the temptation to create ever-bigger social followings, subscriber lists, and website visits irrespective of the type of people so engaged and the quality of their engagement.

Follower counts, social media reach, ‘likes’, and visitors are sometimes referred to as ‘vanity metrics’ –  they look good but scratch the surface and they are far less impressive.

At the Forum, we had a mission to expand the understanding of work to solve the globe’s most pressing challenges. That required accessible, shareable content. But we also needed to get into more specialist, influential communities, which demanded specialist content and engagement tactics.

Here’s the thing about audience development – there’s no one-size-fits-all solution; you need different tactics for different segments, which is expensive. So it pays to think strategically about how to target. 

Creating Engaging Content for Audience Segments

You must develop a content strategy once you know who you’re targeting. And that means thinking about four key drivers of effective content: 

• Usefulness: Where’s the sweet spot between your organisation’s capabilities and what the audience needs?
• Convenience: Which formats and platforms would be most useful?
• Emotional Connection: How do you package content so that it resonates? 
• Regularity: How much content do you need to keep the audience interested?

Understanding what these drivers require of your content is a process of trial and error. But there are lots of tools to help you gauge what’s happening. This is an enormous topic with a vast array of commercial services available. Here are seven tactics that have worked best for WEF and Runcible clients:

1. Produce more of what’s working and less of what’s not. This is such an obvious traffic booster, and yet many teams do not complete this feedback loop. For small audiences, you can do this by casual inspection – what topics are getting the most engagement? For larger audiences, you will need to use the reports functionality in social scheduling tools like Buzzsumo and Sprout Social. 

2. Identify which platforms to give the most TLC

Google Analytics, which is free, can tell you which of your off-platform activities are generating traffic to your website. For almost all sites, Search is the majority supplier of visitors, and yet tends to receive less care and attention than more visible channels like social networks.

3. Segment your audience: The inconvenient truth is that your audience is not homogenous. A one-size-fits-all content strategy will only get you so far. Specialist analytical services like Audience delve deeper into bios and sharing activity to identify audience segments by analysing the information in posts, bios, and engagement activity. 

The diagram shows how common audience interests for three environmental NGOs – Greenpeace, the Rainforest Alliance, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) – have yielded 5 audience segments.

Beware that audience segmentation is a double-edged sword. It allows you to target particular groups with greater precision. But it greatly increases complexity and cost. 

4. Smart packaging: Too many organisations think about packaging – things like headlines, visual elements, and social posts – only at the end of the process. Findability and sharability are so important that they must be part and parcel of all decisions, including whether the content is worth producing if it is hard to make it appealing.

5. Find out what your audience is searching for: AI may change this in the future, but Search is now the dominant source of website traffic. That means it has to be a part of any smart audience development strategy.  

• Understanding user search queries: Knowing what your current users are looking for is important. Google Search Console provides valuable information about the search queries that lead people to your site.

• Researching audience interests: Exploring what other organizations’ audiences are searching for is also beneficial. Commercial search tools like SemRush and AHREFs offer some insight into the search terms driving traffic to other sites.

• Optimising content: After getting an idea of the words and phrases used to find your type of content, optimising your pages accordingly and filling in any gaps is essential.

6. Set up bespoke tracking

There are two important tactics that can help you track whether your content and campaigns are doing what you want them to do. 

The first is to help Google Analytics identify the source of visitors by adding UTM codes to your email links and social posts. Without these, Google will struggle to identify sources with any degree of accuracy.  

The second is to programme Google Analytics to track whether specific campaigns achieve their aims by setting up conversion goals. 

7. Paid promotion. At one end of the spectrum, a typical commercial product launch might spend just 20% of its budget on content and 80% on paid promotion. On the other, a typical not-for-profit organisation might spend 10% on promotion. 

Many organisations shy away from paid promotion, feeling it is not a good use of the budget. But the reality is that social media platforms are increasingly pay-to-play. And the same may be true of Search.

Creating a data-driven team culture

In larger teams, Audience Development becomes a specialist role. The risk is that this blunts the responsibility of other team members to experiment and monitor. For small teams, the risk is that no one has the time to do anything at all.

Whatever team size, the most powerful audience development tactics I have found draw heavily on the world of elite sports.

• Baseball and data analysis: The 2003 book Moneyball by Michael Lewis traced the story of how the Oakland Athletics team outperformed others despite having less money. Coach Billy Beane ignored conventional wisdom, invested a lot of time in data analysis, and found cheaper players who outperformed. There are obvious implications for purpose-driven organisations.

• Formula 1 and the accumulation of marginal gains: You may have seen TV footage of how quickly the tyres can be changed on Formula 1 cars. It’s one of many ways in which fiercely competitive racing teams have optimised workflows in the constant search for an advantage. The concept of marginal gains is now a mainstay of sports training.

• Rugby and the use of lessons from business: Sir Clive Woodward coached a habitually underperforming England to World Cup victory in 2003 using not only data analysis and marginal gains but also establishing a professional culture influenced by his experience in the business world. Famously, he gave players laptops and access to high-end video analysis tools to help them drive their own improvement plans.

Digital media might feel a long way from highly commercialised professional sports. Still, the reality is that, like it or not, all organisations compete with one another (and everyone else)  for public attention. The highest-performing digital comms teams have long since recognised that. This means that time needs to be spent on the following key performance drivers:

Data analysis: Digital media is dripping in data. Most organisations routinely ignore it. But learning to listen to the data is one of the most important new skills. And the best people to act on that data are those responsible for creating and publishing the content. Regular content reviews are a powerful way of making sure decisions incorporate audience feedback. 

Competitor analysis: Digital media changes in tune with technological advances. Most teams don’t have the resources to be an ‘early adopter’ of every new tool, platform or format. But they can get a feel for what’s working for others. There are big gains to being a ‘fast follower’.

Experimentation: This is the toughest thing to get right. Busy people in a results-oriented culture have a tendency to stick with what works. But nothing stands still in digital media, and it’s important to give team members the time and support to run experiments.