Who is your audience?

I'm doing some consulting for a group of political candidates in a foreign country. This started me thinking about who the audience is for these politicians. My first thought was, "all voters, of course." But is it? We had to drill down our polling information to find out who we need to convince to vote for our party. We targeted our message to the 12% undecided voters and the ten percent of the electorate who were backing our opponent but were soft supporters.

All of this reminded me of when I was hosting a show on the now defunct Financial News Network (It was bought be CNBC).

I was working out at my local health club when I was approached by a man who was a viewer of my show. He said he was in advertising and was thinking about doing a spot buy for his client, an upscale steak restaurant on the two Manhattan cable outlets that carried FNN. The restaurant is located in midtown Manhattan. He was also considering a buy for the same client on the local six o'clock news on the New York CBS station. The Channel Two buy would have cost several times more than the more limited FNN purchase. I told him that most of the WCBS news viewership lived outside of Manhattan and only a handful of them could afford a meal at this restaurant. Why would you spend more to target people who are not likely to be your customers? The FNN audience lived in Manhattan and they had money.

We not only have to think about who we are talking to but how do we communicate with them. We need to consider what language to use, and what is the best media. More on that in a future posting.