The audience united is still divided.
You might have one clear message. Your audience has endless expectations.
In the mission-driven space it’s far too easy to fall into the ‘message is the message’ trap. Significant effort gets placed on the research and positioning that support an initiative and then one message is shared consistently with all audiences.
A consistent message is essential for any communications endeavor. Yet, the unified-front approach falls short by not considering the endless ways one audience naturally divides itself.
All audience segments might agree with an initiative while the specific points that resonate most, the internal drivers that guide decision-making, the preferred tone, and the preferred channel to listen or take action can vary significantly.
Take this challenge for example. After working with a reproductive and sexual healthcare organization for many years, they announced that they were undertaking a teen-focused initiative to share sexual health information that would drive real-world behavior change.
As the agency of record, our previous efforts had been generalized to deliver against the organization’s broad mission of advocacy, education, and healthcare. We were excited to finally have one target audience to hone in on. Separating out the advocacy audience which was largely in their 40s or older, and the healthcare recipients who were generally in their 20s and 30s felt like a huge step forward.
Finally, we could craft an impactful experience to reach one target audience on its terms. We quickly realized, however, how segmented the teen audience is and perceives itself to be. While the content to be shared was consistent for all teens, our consulted health experts stressed the variance in cognitive development between younger and older teens. Focus groups revealed that teens were more receptive to content targeted at the gender with which they identified.
The impactful experience that we set out to create evolved into a suite of nine mobile-first digital education tools—with a set targeted at middle schoolers and a set targeted at high schoolers. The middle-school set relied on straightforward language and a softer palette while the high-school set leveraged playful naming and a richer palette. In instances where teens might consider the content to be gender-specific, separate male and female experiences were created.
Our resourceful platform approach utilized a strong design system and consistent underlying technology. Minor copyediting and image selection were key in making each experience feel distinct to a specific segment of the target audience.
Faced with a similar challenge? Consider how your audience can be segmented (and segmented again). You might have one clear message. Your audience has endless expectations.