Understanding Your Audience

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From the course by Northwestern University

Content Strategy for Professionals: Engaging Audiences

337 ratings

Northwestern University

Content Strategy for Professionals: Engaging Audiences

337 ratings

Course 1 of 5 in the Specialization Content Strategy for Professionals

In this course, professionals at all levels of an organization will learn the best ways to engage an audience they want and need by smartly implementing their important, strategic stories and information and by using proven tools and techniques to enhance an audience’s experiences and interest. Content Strategy is a conversation that provides thought-leadership. It starts a “conversation” with users and stakeholders inside and outside an organization. Conversations are the natural way people think about complex issues. Conversations also enable people to develop “stories,” which lead to understanding and helpful mental pictures. Content Strategy practitioners are at all levels of the best enterprises – in all departments and sectors from the top leader to the newcomer in the ranks. In this complex information age, forward-thinking employees know that if they and their organizations are to thrive, they need to go beyond their job descriptions. They must master the most demanding communications frontier – creating engaging, strategic, honest stories and information that is valued by their most important audiences. In turn that will make their enterprise stand out. Regardless of their area of work, position or expertise, Content Strategy practitioners know how to use words, pictures, video, and social and mobile media to interact with their most important constituents with trustable, actionable information that the audience values and will use. The strategic content they produce enhances the user’s lives and deepens their understanding and engagement with the organization. Guest lecturers in this course include: -- Rachel Davis Mersey, Associate Professor, Medill, Northwestern -- Ed Malthouse, Theodore R. and Annie Laurie Sills Professor of Integrated Marketing Communications, Medill, Northwestern -- Bobby Calder, Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing & Director of the Center for Cultural Marketing, Kellogg, Northwestern -- Steven Duke, Associate Professor, Medill, Northwestern -- Janice Castro, Assistant Professor Emerita, Medill, Nothwestern

From the lesson

Audiences and Brand

Module 2 emphasizes why understanding your audience and being able to effectively segment them is crucial to getting your message across. It also addresses how to craft a core creative concept for a content brand.

Understanding Your Audience4:36

Creating Personas3:52

Segmenting Your Audience4:14

Targeting an Audience with Experiences3:26

Meet the Instructors

John Lavine
Founder, Professor and Director, Media Management Center
Candy Lee
Professor
Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications
Randy Hlavac
Lecturer, Medill IMC; CEO, Marketing Synergy Inc

You know taking up people's time with non-strategic content,

it's not only wasteful,

it teaches the important audiences that you want to reach,

to pay no attention to everything you say.

Now, we're going to meet Professor Rachel Davis Mersey.

She specializes in understanding audiences here at the Medill School at Northwestern,

and her research contradicts two things that

professionals who tried to communicate have traditionally believed.

The first is, that their job is to tell

the audience what the organization wants them to know.

Rachel says, her research shows that's wrong.

So, welcome Rachel, and why is that wrong?

What we know is that people will only

learn about things that they're motivated to learn about.

That is to say, people will accept what they need

to know from an organization that delivers what they want to know.

Think about your favorite newspaper or magazine.

You're more willing to read about topics that may not be of particular interest to you,

because it's in a source that understands who you are and serves your needs.

So, let's go on then to the second one.

You compounded blowing up the first by saying,

there really are no more mass audiences.

For most people in organizations,

they wanted everybody inside or everybody outside,

to take in their message.

They can't? Why can't they?

I think you're exactly right to say there are no more mass audiences.

That's something organizations have to accept from the beginning.

The organizations we see being particularly successful at reaching mass audiences,

are doing it because they aggregate a number of targeted audiences.

So, think about something as ubiquitous as Facebook.

Facebook has a large mass audience if you will,

because it serves a number of different smaller audiences with a variety of needs,

high schoolers around there for a very different reason John,

than you and I are on there.

Ultimately, Facebook's success in the marketplace is being able

to aggregate all those targets into one product,

and that's really where organizations need to be focusing if they want scale.

So, okay.

I see the two points you're making.

If I'm listening to this,

I'm going to say,

what's the science behind that?

Give me some underpinning,

so that I can really buy into those results.

There really is science behind this.

People's emotional and cognitive limitations are real.

They can only attend to a certain number of topics deeply at one time.

People only pay attention to topics when they're motivated to do so,

and there are things that precede motivation

and that's what's most important to organizations.

The idea that self-interest and social identification precede motivation.

Organizations have to understand

their audience's social identifications and self-interest needs,

so they can craft messages that serve them where they are.

Okay. Let me just back up for a second.

I want to ask a two part question.

You're saying I'm in an organization,

you're the organization, and you want to reach me with something,

but you have to target me and you have to understand what I'm interested in,

before we get to what the organizations interested in.

Is that the-.

Not only do I have to understand you and what you're interested in,

I have to understand you, your lifestyle,

your needs and behaviors so well,

that I can predict what you need even if you don't know you need it.

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make,

is asking someone what do you need?

No one knew they needed an iPhone until iPhones were invented.

Organizations that are most successful are going to get ahead of that curve,

by understanding people's lifestyles,

behaviors, attitudes, and crafting their messages,

to serve them where they are and advanced their lifestyle in some significant way.

So, it's a one-two punch.

First, you got to give me something that you just know I want,

because like my favorite newspaper, or magazine,

or TV show, I'm going to come there because I

know I'm going to get it. That's number one?

Absolutely.

Then you're going to anticipate a need because you know so much about me,

and you're going to meet that need?

Exactly. It may not be the message that

I thought my organization initially wanted to deliver.

It becomes something of a blend,

where the organization is serving its needs by understanding the audience better.

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