Experiencing Audience Analysis

Recently I made a trip a out west to Kentucky and Tennessee to visit a couple of whiskey distilleries that provide tours open to the public. It got me thinking how places like those go about determining their audience and how they reach them. I decided to focus on Maker’s Mark in particular.

First off I have to say that the tour was the most professional that we went on. The guide knew everything she was talking about and answered any questions we had. According to her, the reason their consumers keep buying from them is because they care about their product and take time to make sure each barrel of whisky is exactly the same. They are not about mass production and are instead about making the best whisky they can. I knew it had to go deeper then that though because you can’t reach an audience that way if they’ve never tried your product.

One way that Maker’s Mark is different from other whisky distilleries is that they appeal to those who are into the idea of going green. They recently installed a system that reduces there natural gas usage by 15-30 percent which you can read more about here. They also have their ambassador program which requires you to sign up to view the extra content on their website. You also get your name on a bronze plaque that goes on a barrel of whisky that you can purchase the whisky from after it ages.

Maker’s Mark also holds special events every year for their ambassadors where they invite them to come visit the distillery and they have a big social gathering on what is called Ambassador’s Day. On Ambassador’s Day, if your barrel of whisky has finished aging you are invited to come buy a bottle that you get to dip in the famous red wax yourself. This video will show you more of the events they have on Ambassador’s Day.

It’s things like this that keep their consumers coming back for more. Maker’s Mark seems to understand that just because you make one sale does not mean you make a lifetime customer. You have to do more for your consumer so they know you actually care about them.

How To Determine and Reach Your Audience

As you may recall, in my last post I talked about why it is important to know who your audience is before planning strategies, writing papers and even making websites. In this post, I hope to show you the best ways to determine who your audience is and how you can reach them so you can get the correct message across to the right people.

There are many ways to determine who your audience is, the easiest being to simply ASK! By asking directly you can find out what peoples likes and dislikes are then go from there. Another good idea is to create a poll. Creating a poll is great because the answers are always accurate as long as you word the questions correctly and don’t make the them too confusing. You can also sign up for a site such as Google Analytics and find out where people are coming from to get to you and what your most popular pages are when determining your audience for your website. You can also click on the links of people that have commented on your website and see what their site is like to get an idea of who they are.

Once you have an idea of who your audience is, you still need to reach out to them. In the book, What Sticks, the authors talk about how to reach your consumer from the standpoint of an advertiser. According to them, the key to reaching your audience is knowing what motivates them to come to you, what the consumer is actually hearing from your message because it might be different then what you want to be saying, knowing which medium to use to connect with the majority of your audience and finally maximizing the effectiveness of your marketing.

If you are still having trouble determining your audience, my next post will be about the different types of audiences out there and which one may be right for you.

Importance of Determining Your Audience

Why is it important to determine your audience before planning any strategy or before writing any kind of posting/paper that is meant for others to read? A seemingly obvious answer that isn’t always apparent to everyone. Not to say that in order to have a good strategy you have to know who your audience is because I’m sure there are some people who get by just fine, but in my experience, if you know who you are writing too then you know what to say and how to say it.

Say for example you are writing two letters. One letter is going to your best friend from college and the other is going home to your mom. Those two letters are probably going to have a few similarities in questions like the typical, “How are things going?” and “Is anything new going on?” but the answers you receive will more then likely be different. The interests of the two people you are writing too are, I’m sure, very different since one of them has probably seen you in you’re not so better states and the other caught you the first time you came home in said state. This being said, you will not be writing to your mom asking if she has been to any good parties lately and you will not be asking your friend how his or her dog is doing.

If you don’t take the time to figure out who your audience is then it’s not very likely you are going to get the right message across. This concept is further explained in this this video on the importance of determining your audience when building a web page.

In my next post I will discuss how you can determine and reach your audience for a more effective strategy.

Welcome to My Blog

Hello all, my name is Alex Concilus and this is my blog on audience analysis and why it is important to know your audience when planning social media strategy. Let me start off with a little bit of background information on myself. I am a recent graduate from the SMAD (School of Media Arts and Design) program at James Madison University with a concentration in Corporate Communications. I enjoy reading, writing and digital photography and am currently studying for the LSAT to hopefully further my education in law school.

The purpose of this blog is to post information on why audience analysis is important to you as a company, a writer, a marketer or anything else that can’t exist without an audience. I will also go into ways you can reach your audience and ways that you can keep your audience once you have found it. Let me start things off with my definition of audience analysis, which to me, is figuring out who is listening to you so you can craft your message to fit their needs.

The order of the blog is reverse chronological so to start from the beginning you must go back a few pages. To read more, please see the resources page for articles I used to gather information. Thank you for stopping by and please contact me for any questions.