What do we mean by your audience?
From Our Toolkit
Understanding your current and potential audiences is essential and should inform the development of all your activity from how you collect information about your collections to how you deliver a programme of activity.
Your audiences are unique to you and should be defined by you. Audiences are never everyone, they should always be clearly defined and reflect the priorities and vision of your organisation.
Collecting information
Collecting information about your current and potential audiences can take a variety of forms including focus groups, visitor surveys, comments books, face to face interviews, observations as well as counting the number of visitors. Data should be collected about both virtual and physical visitors. By using a combination of methods this will help you to build a picture of your audiences.
Undertaking research
Undertaking research and data collection will help you to understand who they are. By doing this the activities of your organisations can be planned and delivered to meet their specific needs.
Undertaking audience research forms part of the process of developing your audience development plan. This plan should reflect your organisation, the detail and scale will depend on the size of your organisation. An audience development plan is your road map to knowing your audiences and how you will develop and deliver a programme, what the cost implications are and how it fits into your wider strategies.
