Defining the audienceFor PB Media

Introduction

Being able to define your audience is hugely important, as it is the audience that will bring success or failure to your product, because no matter how good your product is, if it doesn’t fit the target audiences criteria, the product will be a failure.PB Media, you will need to follow the following information to produce a successful magazine.

Quantitative DataQuantitative data is all to do with numbers and exact figures. These are used to

count up amounts of people in different areas, using percentages. Companies using quantitative data usually use it for adding up the amount of

people using their product. But companies don’t have the time or money to work these figures out their self, so they hire another company that is dedicated solely to working out quantitative data, these companies are called:

National Readership Survey and the Audit Bureau of Circulations

The NRS provides readerships and circulation figures for the print media industry, it also helps to break down the audience into socio-economic groups and breakdowns.

The ABC is the body for media measurements on target audiences for both print and digital formats.

Quantitative data may not be useful to you at the moment as you haven’t produced the magazine yet, therefore no figures are readily available to you. Although, you could look at figures of the readership of similar magazines & see how you could at PB Media break into that.

Example of readership NRS figures Sept’ – Oct’

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Qualitative Data • The qualitative data your company can find on an audience helps to further understand it. It can be

classed as being more in depth.• Whilst quantitative data will help you know how many readers you have, qualitative data will allow

you to gain further information e.g. what they like, where they live, what they dislike & how much they earn. There are different ways you can find out about your possible audience at PB Media:1. Focus group; A focus group will allow you to acquire feedback on your product in a

unstructured & in a calm setting so the participants feel comfortable. They will usually be asked questions about your product ,basically their honest opinion of your product. A focus group could be useful to your company as you are wanting to create a new magazine, a focus group would allow you to find your target audience & alter your product to their needs.

2. Questionnaires; A questionnaire is basically a group of questions presented to the audience to gather information, possibly on paper or online. Although data appears to be easy to acquire & is cost effective, the actually getting the data back from the people (low return rates). Also, as your magazine hasn’t actually been produced, no one will know about it, so you would have to send a prototype of the magazine along with the questionnaire. So overall a questionnaire would not be effective for our company to find out qualitative data..

3. Face-to-face interviews; basically, this is an interview that occurs between two people (the interviewer & the interviewee). Although this would allow you to gain information, a focus group would be much more effective. They are similar in a way as you are doing the interview face to ace with people.

4. A disadvantage of these techniques are that face to face interviews take up a lot of time, but an advantage is that they give you a detailed amount of information.

5. A disadvantage of a focus group is that they are a small amount of people so may not be representative of the whole audience. An advantage of a focus group is that you are always going to get feedback, unlike questionnaires.

Overall, to find out the maximum & to get the most of qualitative data, you could use a mix of all of the top 3 ways of finding such information.

Audience ProfileTo make the audience description brief, quick and easy to read, an

audience profile is made. This is a brief summary of the average points of the group, this is the qualitative information turned into quantitative information. Categories included will be things like, age, gender, class and even more specific things will be included.

The audience profile helps the company target who they need to sell to, where they need to sell, for how much etc.

The audience profile can also help companies team up with companies that have matching audience profiles, as they both target a similar audience. These other companies could be an advertising company e.g. Dior may advertise their latest perfume in Vogue because they have a similar audience profile.

So for your magazine you could get in touch with products that have a similar audience profile so that they can successfully advertise their products. You can also use audience profiling for other magazines that have a similar target audience to yours (once you have come up with a concept), you you can see who you will be competing against & what the audience will/could be like.

Socio-economic status• In basics, socio-economic status measures

an individual or possibly a families economic & social position. This also links to other people, as you are then put into position accordingly.

• This can usually be found & based on income, education & occupation.

• The NRS actually use 6 categories to define the readers of magazines & newspapers. This would be beneficial to you at PB Media as you are producing a magazine. The 6 categories show what jobs, class & percentage of the UK population they are.

• Knowing this will then allow you to aim your magazine at the audience with the right socio-economic status. This will also help you with pricing & works alongside other audience analysis techniques.

• This also helps a magazine know who to advertise to, which thus helps out advertisers. A certain product advertised in a magazine e.g. Pantene Pro V (shampoo) would not be advertised in another e.g. ZOO (lads mag), depending on the cost & need of the product.

PsychographicsThis is a way to understand the audience better on a more personal level. Studying the

audience’s personality, attitude, values, interests and lifestyles. There 7 main categories of personality, and each describes a different kind of person.These categories are resigned, struggler, mainstreamer, aspirer, successor, explorer,

reformer.Mainstream and aspirer are the most reoccurring personality that link to magazines, because

that is how the magazinep0 audiences are divided., so if a person aspires to do something like become a photographer, they will buy a photography magazine.

Psychographics were invented by Grey Advertising company in the 60s, to help improve their understanding of their audience. Their idea was to make products feel more personal and keep the audience happy.

Psychographics can be acquired by simple questionnaires. Handing out questionnaires to determine the audience’s personalities will help your magazine

by understanding your audience, this will mean more people from the target audience will read the magazine.

The pros of finding out the psychographics of the audience is the benefit the audience will see from the magazine, making it more personal, and showing understand of the audience.

The cons of finding out psychographics is that there may be some people that do not fit into one of the seven personality categories, and this could leave a big gap.

If you were to create a magazine based upon psychographics you would have to figure out if your magazine genre would generate an audience of mainstreamers or aspirers.

Geodemographics

• This is based upon where you live. This is found from a national census, produced by the government.

• If you have a similar postcode, or live in a similar area to someone, the people will usually have a similar lifestyle & expenditure.

• It can also give a rough idea of the income of people in that area.• Different people living in different areas will have different

expenditure needs e.g. young professionals will have different needs & different incomes. They will also have different amounts of disposable income.

• Knowing where people/your audience live can help you know where to advertise, how to advertise e.g. billboards, through post. It can also be helpful as you can then find out where you can sell the product e.g. which stores.

• This information would not be of that much use because different people from different post codes will still shop in similar places where magazines are sold like Tesco's, Sainsbury's etc.

AgeAge is a very important aspect of audience definition. As different aged

people have been brought up in a different time, so their views and attitudes will be different. So people of similar ages will have similar likes and dislikes.

Age appropriate material is also important, things that 18-30 year olds may not be suitable for younger teens, and it also works the other way as a 60 year old would not want to read a teenager magazine. So from this point of view you can make broad statements that will apply to the majority of the age group. As an example the majority of teenagers would not want to read a knitting magazine but older people would. But with age there is always an exception as in there may be a proportion of teens that enjoy knitting and buy the magazine even if it is aimed at older people.

Younger generations have a broader choice of entertainment than older generations. Younger peoples entertainment choices are not tied down by there age (although age restrictions are used in some forms of media). Linking this to your possible magazine, you must think of how your target audience will access your product. There are different ways now to access magazines, but different generations would access magazines in different ways. For example, younger generations could access their magazines of interest through applications on iPads and other tablets.

Gender

• Gender is a very basic but effective way to find out about your audience, or is a good place to start with discovering your audience.

• Although audiences in general have moved on from basic gender stereotypes, you can still use gender to help to make a product more appealing for a gender.

• Male & females generally have different interests. So that means your product can be aimed at only one gender, as it often then pushes away the other gender.

• Magazines in particular are gender based e.g. a female would not purchase a magazine such as Zoo & a male wouldn’t usually purchase a magazine about celebrities (Ok!).

• With your new magazine PB Media, you must think of your gender target audience & produce a product that fits into & follows a style in which the gender would not be embarrassed to purchase or be seen with.

Mainstream or Niche?An audience can be labeled as mainstream or niche. Mainstream is the majority of people, the capturing of a large audience. Media that is

considered mainstream are things like blockbuster movies and chart music, things that are readily available and are advertised a lot so everyone will be aware of it. A specific product could be a gossip magazine like ‘Heat’, these are ready by the majority of people, and are advertised a lot so most people will know about it even if they don’t read it or like it. Another form of media that can be deemed mainstream is chart music, this is played all the time on the radio, constantly being advertised, so everyone is aware of it. An advantage of mainstream is that it generates a lot of money because of the large audience, but a disadvantage would be that more publicity and advertising doesn’t necessarily mean more sales, because Miley Cyrus’ new album has been advertised everywhere and had a lot of publicity, comparing to Katy Perry’s new album that hasn’t has as much advertising but has still generated more sales.

Niche is for the smaller audiences, the ones that have very specific interests, like music and films that have to be searched for and are not readily available, so not everyone will be aware of it. Some media producers target a niche market, in hope of capturing a large part of it. Capturing a large part of a niche audience can be more effective than targeting a niche product at a mainstream audience. Depending on the magazine topic, your magazine may be mainstream of niche. Am example of a niche magazine would be one that is written for specific sports or occasions, like a fishing magazine or a wedding magazine. These would only be bough buy a small group of people. The magazines would only be bought and known about, unless you were interested in the sport or you were planning a wedding.

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