Reaching Your Audience

Every business and organization has an audience, or a group of consumers and friends, and their family are potential repeat customers and new prospects. Knowing your audience through marketing efforts will help you to effectively bring public relations into a marketing plan and fit the pieces together. Finding your audience is simply a matter of knowing who your customer is. If you find that your customer is mostly college students, then sending press information on your organization to local colleges is a great start.

If your business is leasing luxury apartments, you would not likely market those apartments to prospects that do not meet your financial criteria. What you would do however, is filter public relations through your local chamber of commerce organizations (yes not just the one in your town, but neighboring towns as well.) Joining the local chambers of commerce gives you access to virtually every business in town. When you build relationships with other businesses they are likely to refer people to you, and in turn you would refer to them. This level of networking can truly be beneficial for everyone involved.

A luxury apartment community in Florida does a great thing – they frequently use realtors and apartment locators to find new residents. So once a month they host a luncheon as a thank you to these realtors and apartment locators for passing on these qualified leads. Qualified leads are those prospects that meet the financial criteria.

Now while this luxury apartment community's target audience is really new residents, these locators are somewhat of an internal customer and this monthly luncheon creates a sense of working together for a common goal. The more residents that the realtors and locators bring to the property the more commissions they receive. This scenario has a positive benefit for everyone.

Another luxury apartment community was falling behind in their occupancy. They decided to move forth with a solid marketing outreach program that consisted of sending an introductory letter to all local businesses. Internally on property, they beefed up their resident referral program. They also contacted residents who had their own business, and asked them to each take turns offering mini services and products to their fellow residents. On one evening a resident who was a massage therapist, gave thirty of her neighbors ten-minute chair massages. This was great advertising for her, but great for the residents because it really builds a sense of community, and current residents are inclined to refer friends and family not only to the massage therapist but to live on property. Reaching out and thinking outside the box can really have great benefits. Customer referrals are priceless.

In order to create an effective marketing message, it is important to know who your target audience is. The target audience includes the end-user, the person who makes the purchase, and the one who influences the purchasing decision. A great example is McDonalds their target audience is made up of children and their parents. The children influences their parent's purchasing decision. Therefore, McDonald's advertising message is directed toward the children, as well as their parents.

The process of determining who your target audience is begins with segmenting the consumer market; finding the right niche. This process begins with identifying groups of people with certain shared characteristics. The categories of characteristics are geographic, demographic, behavioristic, and psychographic. Then combine these groups into larger market segments according to their mutual interest in the product's benefit.

LESSON 7 Key Terms

1. Geographic – of or pertaining to the natural features, population, industries, etc., of a region or regions.


2. Demographic – a single vital or social statistic of a human population, as the number of births or deaths.


3. Psychographic – any attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles.


4. Behavioristic – One of the four target market characteristics.