Targetting an audience

When targeting an audience, many factors should be considered.  There are many ways to decide who to target, people can be determined into catergories which may help producers choose and name which groups of people they want to aim there media product at. 

There are different ways to to target an audience, and different levels of how many people you target.

In the case of music videos, the factors that should be considered when deciding who to target should be; which part of the Social Grade System they fall into, their Socio-Economic values, their demographics, psychographics and also Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  All of these factors will be considered when we choose which audience we will target with our music video.

For a product to succeed it must be ‘mutually beneficial’.  This means that the consumer will benefit from the product because they will enjoy it, in this case enjoy the music.  And for the creator, it is beneficial to them, as they will be provided with an income.

Audience size and reaction are often seen as a way of measuring success.  One way of measuring the audience size, is to use a company called BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board).

BARB  is an organision that shows the total viewing figures for indiviual programs and also channels every day.  Below is a print screen of the TV viewings of music channel; 4Music, showing their most viewed show to be "Uk Hot Top 40 of 2011 So Far".

It shows us the most popular shows that are viewed also.  This can be useful for television channels to work out how much they can charge for adverts in between programs.  For example, the more views a show gets, the higher it would be to place an advert in.  Popular itv show X-Factor charged a staggering £250, 000 for a 30 second advert in their live final.

• Mass media is when you appeal to the masses.
• Broadcasting is showing over 20 million people.
• Narrowcasting is the opposite to broadcasting, and targets a niche audience.

Targetting an audience must be thought about for a long time due to the amount of different factors involved.  There are many new ways to advertise and reach an audience due to the prolifferation of media technology in the last 10 years.  For example the increase and popularity of facebook and also twitter can be a new way for marketing directors to focus on advertising.