Audience Analysis - Lakelands Computing

You might aim a product or communication at just Males, or just Females, or have slightly different designs for non-binary genders. You need to be very careful with letting gender influence your decisions otherwise you end up with sweeping stereotypes such as all girls love pink fluffy things, and all boys like football. It is not only very lazy but it is wildly inaccurate, sexist and can be offensive. Gender can be taken into account along with other factors to create a more complete picture of the audience but on its own it doesn't tell you much.

Age ranges eg (14-17) can be useful as they can give an indication of what people might be more interested in, and how  mature their attitudes might be.  However it should be used as a part of the analysis, not all of it. There are very mature 17 yr olds and very immature 37 yr olds.

This refers to a geographic region - there is no point sending things to people in Scotland if they need to visit a shop in London to buy the product. You can also alter the tone of a communication based on where it aimed at - for example something aimed at an Australian may have a different tone to something aimed at a Canadian.

Be very careful when categorising based on ethnicity and altering the message and tone based on that. When done casually or carelessly, and even sometimes when it has been carefully thought out, it will come across as being Racist. You do not want to get this wrong. When done right it can be very effective for example in America there are a number of people who identify as Irish due to having Irish grandparents / great grandparents. Approaching them via this Irish heritage to promote Irish related products could be very succesful and unlikely to offend. Be aware of ethnicity of your audience so you don't upset them but think long and hard about using it in any other way.

Income, or the amount of money someone has, can be a good way to idnetifiy your audience. You wouldn't try to sell a £250,000 car if they earn £250 a week

Socio Economics is a system used to group people based on their income and occupation (job). It is used as a short hand way of refering to these groups, eg, we will target A,B and C1 - the idea is those in the "higher groups" have jobs that pay more and will have more spending money as a result.

This is one of the more useful categories - what are these people actually interested in. Eg, car racing games, fast cars, motorbikes, fast water sports, adrenaline based activities, "action" films. Knowing their general interests lets you build more appropriate messages and material that will appeal to just these people, this niche.

Does the audience need anything specific to help them access the message, product eg a braille leaflet, or a screen reader, or a larger font, or it written in simple english, or a translated version into Italian, or voice commands etc. etc.