Tidy up your target audience.
Campaign Refresh.
It’s a new year, and there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world, which means it’s a good time to wipe down, tidy up, dust off, and air out your behavior change strategy.
We kicked off the Campaign Refresh process by wiping down your behavior change goals. Now, it’s time to tidy up your target audience.
First things first: When and where did you ask your audience to “show up”?
One way to determine whether you’re speaking to the right audience is how they respond to your invitation to join your cause, attend an event, volunteer, or participate in another activity you offer.
Even if you’ve been collecting this type of data over the course of the year, it can still be helpful to list the invitations you extended last year. What were you asking the audience to join or show up for?
You can create multiple lists if you have multiple audiences. It can also be helpful to note whether the activities and events were one-time invitations or recurring ones.
And…did they show up??? Step 2: Assess how the year went.
Did your audience show up to the events and activities you invited them to?
▢ Yes, they did! The number of people who joined met or exceeded our expectations.
▢ Some people showed up, which is great, but we were hoping for more.
▢ People showed up, but they weren’t our target audience.
▢ It was crickets. Little to no people joined.
Congratulations if you checked off the first box! It is not always easy to achieve this goal, especially since audiences are juggling many competing priorities.
Here’s a follow-up question for those extending recurring invitations, such as quarterly donation asks or monthly webinars:
Did you notice any of the following patterns in attendance numbers or engagement?
▢ Engagement was consistent across the events.
▢ Attendance numbers started strong but decreased as the year went on.
▢ Engagement started slowly but the numbers increased throughout the year.
▢ It was a whole lot of peaks and valleys; no consistent pattern.
Before we head to step 3, let’s pause a second for those who checked the box for “people showed up, but they weren’t our target audience” in the previous question. I have a few follow-up questions:
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Was your event so awesome that you had party crashers?
If so, immediately recruit those people to be your next volunteers – they show up for free food. -
Did you accidentally post messages about the activity to the wrong channel?
If yes, consider whether you should pivot your target audience to them.
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Did the people who showed up seem receptive and interested in what you were doing?
If yes, then congratulations – you just onboarded a new audience segment to your program!
Step 3: Adapt and adjust for this year.
I love myself a good if-then results chain. Let’s get to it.
Systematize
If your audience turned up and took action last year, then:
→ Celebrate all they’ve accomplished! Create a positive feedback loop to highlight how each individual’s support led to collective action and outcomes.
→ Keep them excited and engaged by providing an early and “easy” action they can start the year with (quick wins).
→ Create an engagement plan for the next 3-6 months to provide various ways the audience can continue to be involved. It’s helpful for the audience to know “what’s next” when they join an event or activity.
→ Decide if depth or breadth is your next step. While you maintain the momentum of your existing audience, you can invite a subset to dive deeper into the cause, maybe by becoming volunteers, or you can expand your audience at the margins (by inviting others who are similar to the current audience).
Declutter and rearrange
If your audience didn’t show up or engagement levels dipped later in the year, then:
→ Examine the logistics of your event or activity. Was it held at a time and place that is convenient and accessible for your audience? You may have to experiment with different times, locations, days of the week, seasons, etc., to see what works best (or you can ask them directly through a survey!)
→ Tighten up the message. We’ll dust off your key messages in the next post, but in the meantime, double check that your invitations are clear (what, when, where, how to join) and speak to a specific audience (i.e., not “everyone” or the “general public”).
→ Send more event reminders this year. One post or email about an upcoming event is not enough to break through the information clutter. Use this year to practice sharing multiple messages in multiple places to increase engagement. Bigger events will require even more nudges.
→ Explore whether you are asking too much too often. Reminders are helpful; bombarding your audience with too many calls-to-action can wear them out and cause a drop in engagement levels.
There’s one big caveat to all of this!
If you discovered in the previous post that you have a misalignment between your audience and behavior change goal, then you’ll have to Marie Kondo the whole thing! The above suggestions won’t do the trick.
Instead, take a big step back and create a new plan based on either your behavior change goal or your existing audience.
→ If you start with the behavior change goal, then determine which audiences are able and open to change that you can successfully reach and engage
→ If starting with the audience, consider which behaviors they are able and open to adopt, and therefore, what type of events and activities you should invite them to.
A final pick-up: A refresh exercise
As you systematize or organize your audience engagement tactics for this year, identify at least one opportunity to learn something new about your audience that can help shape future plans.
It could be a brief survey you send in an email, a specific question you ask during in-person events, or a Zoom poll. You may ask for feedback on your events and activities, but also be sure to ask at least one question about them:
Congrats! You have successfully tidied up your target audience.