R093 TA2: Target Audience and Segmentation
How audiences are described and divided up, and how each description changes the product. Expect to justify design choices against a named audience.
Describing an audience
Audiences are described in three ways, and strong answers use all three.
Demographics: who they are
| Factor | Example |
|---|---|
| Age | 11 to 14, or 25 to 40, or over 65 |
| Gender | Where the product is genuinely gendered, such as a specialist magazine |
| Income and occupation | What they can afford and what they understand |
| Education | How technical the language can be |
| Location | Local, national, international; urban or rural |
| Ethnicity, religion and culture | Imagery, language and dates that will or will not land |
| Family status | Single, couple, parents of young children |
Psychographics: how they think
Values, attitudes, interests, lifestyle and aspirations. Two 30 year olds on the same salary can want opposite things, and psychographics is what separates them. A brand that sells on sustainability is targeting an attitude, not an age.
Behaviour: what they do
How often they buy, which platform they use, whether they watch with sound on, how long they stay. This is measurable, which is why it drives most real decisions online.
Dividing a broad market into groups that behave similarly, so each group can be addressed properly. A product aimed at a segment beats a product aimed at everyone, because it can make choices.
Step 1 of 3 Demographics: the measurable facts, and what they force.
- The persona is a made up person who stands for the audience, built from research.
- Each trait leads to a design decision, so the product fits the audience.
How the audience changes the product
This is the part that carries the marks. For each audience factor, there is a decision.
| If the audience is | Then |
|---|---|
| Younger | Shorter, faster edits; vertical video; informal tone; platform native |
| Older | Larger type, higher contrast, no assumed app knowledge, clearer navigation |
| Expert in the field | Technical vocabulary without explanation; respect for accuracy |
| New to the field | Define terms, build up, avoid jargon, use analogy |
| On mobile | Thumb reach, one column, big tap targets, works on a slow connection |
| In a noisy place | Captions and on screen text, because the sound will be off |
| International | Avoid idiom, culture specific humour and date formats; allow for translation |
Accessibility is part of the audience
Around one in five people in the UK has a disability. Designing for the audience includes contrast that can be read with low vision, captions for deaf viewers, alternative text for screen readers, and controls that work without a mouse. It is also a legal duty for service providers under the Equality Act 2010.
"I used a bold sans serif because it looks nice" scores nothing. "I used a bold sans serif at 18 point because the audience is over 65 and the leaflet will be read in a waiting room, often without reading glasses" scores every time, because the choice is traced to the audience.
Finding out who the audience is
You are not supposed to guess. The specification expects you to know where audience information comes from.
- Client knowledge — they usually know their customers better than anyone
- Analytics — real data on who visits, on what device, for how long
- Surveys and questionnaires — quick, cheap, large samples, but shallow
- Interviews and focus groups — slow, small, but reveal reasons
- Observation and user testing — what people do, rather than what they say they do
- Competitor analysis — who the similar products are clearly aimed at
- Published market research — industry reports, census data, Ofcom and ASA research
Why what people say and what they do differ
Ask people how long they spend on social media and the average answer is well under the measured figure. That is not lying; it is memory. It is also why observation and analytics are trusted over self report when the two disagree.
Asking your family is not research. Five people from the actual audience is worth more than fifty from outside it, and the exam will credit you for saying who you asked, not just that you asked.
Key terms you must be able to define
- Target audience
- The specific group a media product is made for.
- Demographics
- Measurable characteristics of an audience such as age, income, location and occupation.
- Psychographics
- An audience's values, attitudes, interests and lifestyle.
- Segmentation
- Dividing a market into groups that behave similarly so each can be addressed properly.
- Analytics
- Measured data about how real users behave with a product.
- Focus group
- A guided discussion with a small group from the audience, used to find out why they think something.
- Accessibility
- Designing so that people with disabilities can use the product.
Flashcards
Say the definition out loud before you flip the card. Retrieving it from memory is what builds recall, reading it again is not.
Reach the top grade on this topic
Top answers name the audience precisely and then trace at least three decisions back to it. Vague audience, vague justification, low mark. "Men aged 18 to 24 who follow football on their phones during matches" lets you justify vertical video, captions, a fast cut and a 15 second length in one sentence each.
Mistakes that cost marks here
- Describing the audience only by age, when psychographics and behaviour carry just as many marks.
- Saying 'aimed at everyone', which makes every design decision unjustifiable.
- Justifying choices by personal taste rather than by the audience.
- Forgetting accessibility, which is part of designing for a real audience and a legal duty.
- Treating a survey of friends as audience research.
Audience segmentation is why the same supermarket sells an identical bag of pasta under three different labels at three different prices. The pasta is the segment-blind part; the packaging is doing all the work.
Knowledge check
Exam-style questions
Five written questions in the style of the real paper. Write a full answer, then let the marker check it against the mark scheme.
- LOne valid demographic factor
- LA second, different demographic factor
Age, and household income.
- LDemographics defined as measurable factual characteristics
- LAn example of a demographic
- LPsychographics defined as values, attitudes and lifestyle
- LAn example of a psychographic, or why the distinction matters
Demographics are the measurable facts about an audience: their age, income, occupation, education and where they live. Psychographics describe how that audience thinks: their values, attitudes, interests and lifestyle. The distinction matters because two people with identical demographics can want opposite things. Two 30 year olds on the same salary in the same city might be targeted completely differently if one buys on price and the other buys on sustainability, and only psychographics tells you which is which.
- LA decision about text size or legibility
- LThe reason linked to the audience
- LA decision about contrast or colour
- LThe reason linked to the audience
- LA decision about controls or navigation
- LThe reason linked to the audience
The text should be set noticeably larger than usual, around 18 to 20 point for body copy, because age related changes to eyesight are near universal over 60 and many visitors will read the screen without their glasses. Colour contrast should be high, with dark text on a light background and no pale grey on white, because reduced contrast sensitivity makes low contrast text effectively invisible and museum lighting adds glare. The controls should be large, clearly labelled buttons with no swipe or pinch gestures, because gesture conventions are learned from phone use rather than being obvious, and a visitor who cannot work out how to move on simply walks away from the exhibit.
- LThe platform choice is linked to the audience's behaviour
- LA decision about video or image length or pace
- LCaptions or sound off viewing is addressed
- LA decision about tone of voice
- LA decision about imagery or casting
- LA psychographic or behavioural insight is used, not just age
- LAccessibility or inclusivity is considered
- LA judgement weighing the factors
The audience's behaviour decides the platform first: this group watches short form video on a phone, so the campaign should be built vertically at 9:16 for feeds and stories rather than cropped down from a 16:9 master, and each piece needs to work in under fifteen seconds with the point made in the first three, because that is when the thumb decides. Almost all of that viewing happens with the sound off, so every spoken line needs burned in captions and the key message has to be carried by on screen text and image rather than by voiceover. The tone should be conversational and peer to peer rather than corporate, because this audience is unusually alert to advertising that pretends to be authentic, and a brand voice that sounds like a press release is dismissed instantly. Casting and imagery follow the same logic: real recreational runners of varying body types and paces, shot on routes that look like ordinary streets and parks, are more persuasive than studio shots of athletes, because the audience is buying an identity it can see itself in. The psychographic insight underneath all of this is that running is being used to mark progress and to belong to a community, which is why the campaign should centre on shared achievement and give people something they would willingly post themselves, rather than centring on the product's features. Captions and strong contrast also make the campaign usable by deaf and partially sighted members of the same audience, which costs nothing and widens the reach. Of all these factors the behavioural one is the most decisive, because getting the format and the first three seconds wrong means the rest of the work is never seen at all.