What is the process of using what you learned during audience analysis?

By Indeed Editorial Team

Updated March 31, 2022 | Published June 22, 2021

Updated March 31, 2022

Published June 22, 2021

Businesses use audience analysis to derive key insights about their consumer base and better understand their customers to create more engaging content. Audience analysis can help companies gain new buyers and maintain customer loyalty. Understanding how to perform an audience analysis can help you learn more about who your customers are, what they want and what they expect from your business. 

In this article, we define the different types of audience analysis, how to perform an effective audience analysis and why it’s important.

What is an audience analysis?

An audience analysis is a process of collecting as much information as possible about an audience to better understand who they are and what they care about. This helps businesses, marketers and customer service experts identify, plan and implement marketing campaigns and strategies. With data gleaned from audience analysis, marketers can also execute audience segmentation, perform market research and guide decision-making.

The questions you may try to answer with an audience analysis include:

• What platforms and channels do audiences engage with the most?

• What types of topics should our content cover? 

• What values are most important to our audience?

• What kind of campaigns are competitors launching, and which of these work best across audiences?

Types of audience analysis 

Audience analysis can take different forms based on the end goal. Different types of audiences analyses include:

• Demographic audience analysis categorizes an audience based on statistical demographics like age, language, religion and ethnicity.

• Geographic audience analysis examines audiences based on where they live. 

• Psychographic audience analysis is when audiences are categorized based on IAO (interests, activities and opinions) characteristics such as their values, lifestyle, needs, wants, concerns, hobbies, spending habits and attitude.

• Media audience analysis uses data from social media platforms and other media sources to help brands understand their audience.

• Competitor (or competitive) audience analysis is when a business analyzes data about the audiences of its competitors.

Nowadays, companies can conduct an audience analysis easier than ever with easier access to real-time data gathered via audience analysis tools such as website metrics, social media and audience intelligence software.

Related: Audience Segmentation Guide: Types and Steps

Why is audience analysis important? 

Businesses use audience analysis to gain a basic understanding of who their audience is and use data to determine strategies for product and content creation, public relations, brand marketing and customer service. Here are some common benefits of conducting an audience analysis:

• Improving accessibility: Accessibility dictates whether a business' services or products are easy for consumers to find and purchase. For example, issues of accessibility can include whether your site is mobile-friendly or if your ads are reaching the right people. 

• Learning audience expectations: Expectations can serve as a base measurement of the product's or service's ability to meet customer pain points. For example, if a customer expects your product to cost a certain amount, finding out it costs less could be a selling point. 

• Identifying barriers or facilitators: Businesses can learn what kinds of web platforms their customers most often use and what practices might prevent customers from interacting with their brand. For example, some customers might be more interested in purchasing from businesses that actively support social causes.

Knowing this information can help marketers and business leadership reduce the barriers between themselves and the customer and strengthen facilitators to increase sales and brand awareness.

Related: Demographics vs. Psychographics in Audience Segmentation

How to conduct an audience analysis

Performing an audience analysis requires certain steps to ensure you're capturing the right information. Here are the steps to performing a thorough audience analysis:

1. Identify your prospective audience

First, identify the potential audience you're studying. You can determine what your customers might look like, where they congregate and what their interests are. You can create a customer profile to get a better idea of your target audience and compare it to your current audience. Once you understand who the potential audience is for your product or presentation, you can narrow down the results by specific factors or demographics to appeal to a more niche group.

2. Select the priority audience and characteristics

The priority audience is who you absolutely need to see your material or buy your products. For example, if your products appeal to teens, you can narrow the audience down by need. Your products or presentation might be for teenagers who play sports. Consider the characteristics of this audience, including what they like to do, where they interact online and what problems your product or presentation can solve.

3. Create your analysis tools

The next step in the process is to create your analysis tools. Consider how you can analyze your audience, what tools you might need and how you can read the results of your analysis. You might choose an audience poll, customer satisfaction surveys, special software or other methods to collect your information. You can also ask an audience directly about certain aspects of the brand to see if there are any gaps in understanding.

4. Determine voluntariness

Next, determine if the audience is voluntarily buying your products or buying out of need. The distinction between these two can change the entire narrative of a presentation or marketing tactic. 

For example, if the business provides a necessity like food, your focus might be more on how to direct customers from the competition to your brand rather than why the audience should spend extra money at your store.

With luxury items, your campaign might focus more on how your product improves your audience's lives. Voluntariness is an important measurement and helps you learn more about your audience's motivation for seeking your brand or product.

5. Collect results

Gather all of your results and determine how you want to analyze them, including what information you're looking for and whether the sample size was large enough. From there, you can adjust the analysis to include more people or focus on a different demographic before moving on to the analysis phase. You can also create a bulleted list of information you hope to learn from the analysis early in the process to serve as a reference.

Related: How To Perform a Customer Profitability Analysis in 5 Steps

6. Analyze your results

Consider the information you learned during the analysis and whether it meets your initial goals. You can look for patterns that show certain behaviors or trends and conclude if those patterns are helpful to the company. If you learned what you needed to, you can leverage that information to create better marketing campaigns and engaging content. If you feel another study is necessary or the analysis is incomplete, you can allocate resources to perform an audit or another analysis.

Consider the following when you analyze your results:

• Whether you met your initial analysis goals

• If your tools must change for the next analysis

• If you better understand audience demographics

• Whether you understand the audience's pain points

• If the business can meet the audience's expectations