Create Connections with Audience-Focused Communications
Community-minded organizations are often managed by lean teams and volunteers. It’s understandable that the budget set aside for communications is tight and tends to be stretched thin.
This is why it is important to be deliberate in developing your communications plan to reach your target audience. Your campaigns and initiatives aren’t meant to appeal to everyone. If your messaging is too vague and generic, it will not resonate with your niche.
This is why it is important to be deliberate in developing your communications plan to reach your target audience. Your campaigns and initiatives aren’t meant to appeal to everyone. If your messaging is too vague and generic, it will not resonate with your niche.
5 ways to focus your communications on your audience
1. Define your target audience
Think about the profiles of your ideal supporters. Create fictional characters that represent each persona. Define their demographics including age, gender, income, ethnicity, geography, and level of education. Psychographics are also important to ascertain your audiences’ interests and attitudes.
If you are unsure how to create your personas, you can go through your database and look for patterns and commonalities. Arrange interviews with donors or supporters to understand their opinions and motivations. You can also check out websites and social media accounts of similar organizations to get a better idea of who they are targeting.
Personas are helpful in tailoring your messaging to specific groups and keep your communications organized.
2. Understand what they care about
Motivations for giving donations, buying products or supporting advocacy can be complex. This may be influenced by their affinity to the cause and their personal values. They may be seeking recognition and public acknowledgement, or wish to remain anonymous. The psychological satisfaction and joy brought about by having a positive impact on the community can also be a strong incentive. Baseline surveys done at the start of your communications campaign can help you assess their priorities. The more you understand what drives these behaviours, the more targeted and relevant your messaging will be.
3. Choose the right channels
There is no easier time to reach your audience than the here and now. The internet has made it easier to exchange ideas and connect with your own followers. But this also means that your audience is a lot more dispersed and may require a multi-channel approach in engaging with them.
Social media is a powerful tool to gain support for your initiatives. But in recent years, they have adopted a “pay-to-play” model. Organic reach is limited unless organizations are willing to spend on advertising. A good workaround is adding hashtags to enhance your reach. Use hashtags to promote your event, invite comments on trending topics, or encourage sharing of user generated content (UGC).
4. Test and assess effectiveness
Measuring the effectiveness of your communications can be a struggle if you don’t define your campaign goals from get go. Luckily, most platforms offer free analytics to assess reach, engagement and conversions. For example, Google Analytics helps you check which content on your website gets more traffic. Google offers a free certification course that teaches you how to interpret Google Analytics data and optimize your website.
Periodically evaluating your messaging helps you allocate resources wisely to achieve desired results.
5. Listen to feedback
Feedback can come in many forms. You can develop surveys to collect actionable insights from donors, advocates, volunteers and key stakeholders. Free tools such as Survey Monkey or Google Forms are great for creating surveys online that come with shareable links.
Focus group discussions may take a bit of time and effort, but allow you to dig deeper into how the community perceives your organization, whether they are aware of your services/initiatives or if they support your mission. Other ways to gather feedback are through comments on your social media pages or relevant online forums.
Think about the profiles of your ideal supporters. Create fictional characters that represent each persona. Define their demographics including age, gender, income, ethnicity, geography, and level of education. Psychographics are also important to ascertain your audiences’ interests and attitudes.
If you are unsure how to create your personas, you can go through your database and look for patterns and commonalities. Arrange interviews with donors or supporters to understand their opinions and motivations. You can also check out websites and social media accounts of similar organizations to get a better idea of who they are targeting.
Personas are helpful in tailoring your messaging to specific groups and keep your communications organized.
2. Understand what they care about
Motivations for giving donations, buying products or supporting advocacy can be complex. This may be influenced by their affinity to the cause and their personal values. They may be seeking recognition and public acknowledgement, or wish to remain anonymous. The psychological satisfaction and joy brought about by having a positive impact on the community can also be a strong incentive. Baseline surveys done at the start of your communications campaign can help you assess their priorities. The more you understand what drives these behaviours, the more targeted and relevant your messaging will be.
3. Choose the right channels
There is no easier time to reach your audience than the here and now. The internet has made it easier to exchange ideas and connect with your own followers. But this also means that your audience is a lot more dispersed and may require a multi-channel approach in engaging with them.
Social media is a powerful tool to gain support for your initiatives. But in recent years, they have adopted a “pay-to-play” model. Organic reach is limited unless organizations are willing to spend on advertising. A good workaround is adding hashtags to enhance your reach. Use hashtags to promote your event, invite comments on trending topics, or encourage sharing of user generated content (UGC).
4. Test and assess effectiveness
Measuring the effectiveness of your communications can be a struggle if you don’t define your campaign goals from get go. Luckily, most platforms offer free analytics to assess reach, engagement and conversions. For example, Google Analytics helps you check which content on your website gets more traffic. Google offers a free certification course that teaches you how to interpret Google Analytics data and optimize your website.
Periodically evaluating your messaging helps you allocate resources wisely to achieve desired results.
5. Listen to feedback
Feedback can come in many forms. You can develop surveys to collect actionable insights from donors, advocates, volunteers and key stakeholders. Free tools such as Survey Monkey or Google Forms are great for creating surveys online that come with shareable links.
Focus group discussions may take a bit of time and effort, but allow you to dig deeper into how the community perceives your organization, whether they are aware of your services/initiatives or if they support your mission. Other ways to gather feedback are through comments on your social media pages or relevant online forums.
Find out how to focus your communications
Need help with optimizing your communications campaigns? Contact Perch Communications for a free, 30-minute consultation.