It’s 2022: Do You Know Where Your Audience Is?

By Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications

Quick! A controversial issue is about to blow up your company’s reputation. There’s heated chatter among Twitter trolls. Reporters are poking around in your email box and voicemail. There’s trash talk building in conversations among your customers, vendors and suppliers out in the real world.

How should you respond?

• Issue a press release and hope media reprints it, so your audiences see it.
• Retain a media trainer to help you prepare for TV, radio and newspaper interviews – then start returning reporter phone calls and granting interviews.
• Buy advertorial space in daily newspapers to present your side of the issue without editorial intervention.
• Post blurbs on your social media sites and hope they get seen and go viral.
• Take a deep dive into the issue and what you’re doing about it on your company’s next podcast.
• Post regular updates on the issue on your company website so your side of the issue is pushed to the top of Google keyword searches.

What’s the right thing to do?

You may need to do all of these things and more – but if you understand the demographics of your key audiences, you can make supercharged strategic decisions about the communications medium needing the most immediate attention.

You’re just not going to effectively reach younger (18-49) or minority audiences if your message is focused on traditional media – TV, radio or newsprint – according to a new Pew study. The study’s results reflect the nuclear hit newspapers and radio in particular have suffered with the explosion of news on digital devices and social media. Only 5 percent of all respondents prefer to get their news from print publications, and only 7 percent from radio in this age cohort. While TV fares a bit better, with 33 percent of respondents saying it’s their preferred source of news, 53 percent prefer getting news from digital devices on news websites, social media or via search.

The numbers become more eye opening when you break out demographics. Want to reach 18-29-year-olds? A whopping 81 percent of them prefer to get their news on a digital device, and mostly on social media sites. Sixty-four percent of 30-49-year-olds similarly prefer news on a digital device, and a majority of Hispanic and Asian respondents do as well. But if you need to reach Americans 50 and older, TV is their predominant preference for news (see Pew’s methodology for the study).

Bottom line: Today there is just no good “one-size-fits-all” outreach solution to maximize your message’s audience reach. Technology has severely fragmented audiences, splintering them by demographics among increasingly varied – and sometimes partisan – news platforms, both traditional and digital. A scattergun approach to your communications may reach your intended audiences – but it may not. And if it’s not reaching the right audience segment, you’ve wasted your time and money and protracted your fight to protect your company’s reputation.

With the ceaseless emergence of new communication platforms, old advice may be the best advice – know your audience. Research the best information delivery platform to reach them. Roll out an integrated communications plan using appropriate tools for each of your audience targets. Then let ‘er rip!