Understanding, Aligning, and Acting: A Comprehensive Guide to Audience Strategy Adoption

Here's our comprehensive guide on how to make sure a great audience strategy has long term impact

As an external agency, we bring decades of experience and expertise in optimizing the audience strategy development process. We've honed our methodologies, honed our insights, and crafted strategies that far outperform the average success rate of 14%. However, it's crucial to acknowledge that our efforts, while highly effective, don't guarantee absolute success. This reality stems from the fact that a successful audience strategy goes beyond well-laid plans and insightful research; it requires an internal commitment to democratize the understanding and application of the strategy across your organization. To truly maximize the potential of your audience strategy, your team must imbibe and champion it. In response to this imperative, we are continually investing in innovative approaches in research, strategy development, and organizational adoption. Our aim is to empower YOU with the tools and understanding needed to ensure the audience strategies we devise are not only received but are adopted, embraced, and acted upon effectively within your organization. It is in that spirit we've developed this framework.We hope this helps! The transformative potential of a well-conceived audience strategy is beyond dispute. They can be a catalyst for both cultural metamorphosis and commercial success. But to unlock this potential, a critical fact must be acknowledged: a mere 14% of audience segmentations contribute value. This insight, gleaned from research referenced in the Economist, invites us to focus on three vital areas for successful audience strategy adoption: Understanding, Aligning, and Acting. Understanding Your Audience: NOW and NEXT The cornerstone of a winning audience strategy is profound comprehension of your present and prospective audiences. Reflect on these pivotal questions: Who are the customers we currently serve well, and who will fuel our future growth? This understanding should be more than an abstract concept - immerse yourself in these audience segments, participate in their gatherings, or observe focus groups. Document your insights about the NOW and NEXT audiences in a clear and coherent manner, ensuring they are easily accessible and comprehensible for new hires. Aligning Your Team: The Role of Leadership With a robust understanding of your audience established, the next stride involves fostering alignment throughout your organization. Your leadership should present a united front, consistently communicating the same narrative about the NOW and NEXT audiences. Remember, mixed messages can wreak havoc on strategies. If necessary, undertake leadership training to prevent this. The role of leadership extends beyond maintaining consistent messaging. Regular referencing of the NOW and NEXT audiences in meetings and documents can emphasize their significance, dispelling any notion that the audience strategy is merely a fleeting trend. Acting On Your Strategy: Translating Understanding Into Action Armed with clarity and alignment, the time arrives to convert your audience strategy into decisive action. Consider this: What overarching strategic initiatives are required for your NOW and NEXT audiences? This clarity should permeate all team functions, whether it's Product, Price, Place, Promotions, or Partnerships. But broad strategic understanding alone isn’t sufficient. Your teams also need granular guidance on day-to-day tactics that resonate with each audience segment. Ensure this clarity is reflected in all reports, thereby aligning your organizational priorities with your NOW and NEXT audiences, and preventing potential distractions by other audiences. Lastly, embrace the mantra of continuous improvement. Regularly review and refine your efforts towards meeting the needs of your NOW and NEXT audiences. This allows for timely course corrections and realignment if required. Our nine-step guide In our quest to provide a more detailed, actionable guide for audience strategy adoption, we've further elaborated on the primary model of Understanding, Aligning, and Acting. Each of these core elements is dissected into three sub-components, allowing us to delve deeper into the nuances and subtleties of each. This enriched framework provides a granular roadmap to drive your audience strategy success, highlighting the interplay of various sub-elements within each core theme. This expanded model transforms our tripartite approach into a dynamic, nine-step strategy, ensuring that every aspect of audience strategy development and implementation is comprehensively covered.

Adopting this tripartite approach of Understanding, Aligning, and Acting or the enhanced (or nonuple version!), can substantially enhance the efficacy of your audience strategy, transforming it from a mere theoretical construct into a formidable instrument for growth and transformation. Don't let your audience strategy join the ranks of the 86% that sit on a shelf. Instead, devote resources to understanding your audiences, strive for organizational alignment, and implement decisive actions to reap the rewards of a successful audience strategy. We're here to help!