Messages don’t land when audience’s aren’t understood
When considering audience, it’s easy to get over excited – this content is for everyone in the region/organisation/on planet earth! The enthusiasm is great, but there’s a real risk of producing generic content that gets lost in a sea of sameness.
We’ve all seen or even produced content that didn’t quite land. Maybe the visual storytelling of an animation would have done a better job of explaining a new technical process than a piece to camera featuring an engineer. A series of 90 second videos may have had more success than the 5 minute video that time poor employees were sent.
5 simple steps
If we want to turn a message into a piece of content that moves audiences to action, we really need to understand our audience. We can do this using the 5Ws – WHAT, WHY, WHO, WHERE & WHEN.
WHAT – Clearly understand the message
Are you really clear on what you want to say? Can it be articulated in a single sentence? Is it sensitive in nature? How much detail do you need to share to ensure the audience ‘gets it’?
WHY – Is there a clear goal?
You have a clear message, do you have clear outcomes and objectives? What is it you’re expecting your audience to do? What action do you want them to take?
WHO – Hone down your target audience
If you need to reach everyone in an organisation, what’s the best medium? Consider language and tone. If it’s a specific team, what level of detail will they need? What’s the best way to do this?
WHERE – What channels do your audience use?
How are your audience going to access the content? Is it suitable for their channel of choice? Is it easily accessible? Will you need to put spend behind it to ensure it reaches them?
WHEN – Is it deadline driven?
Consider your timeline and how your audience relates to this. Do they have specific working hours? Are they across multiple time zones?
Answering these questions will help you refine your audience and communicate more effectively with them. We’ll take a look at a technique that can help us gain even more insight in a future email.
This is just the beginning!
This cinema advert we produced for ScreenSkills is a great example of the 5Ws at work. Understanding our audience allowed us to craft the right narrative from Mel’s story.We hope you’ve found this useful and if you’d like to know more, or you want to talk to us about a project you like our help with, get in touch!