Re-evaluating our audiences in 2020 and beyond
Re-evaluating our audiences in 2020 and beyond
As 2020 has upended so much in our lives, it has also had enormous impact on our audiences and how we engage them.
Lockdown necessitated digital engagement on levels many organisations hadn’t previously undertaken, and saw creativity and experimentation that organisations would perhaps previously have been too nervous, busy or risk-averse to try.
As 2020 draws to a close, it’s valuable to reflect on how our audiences and work engaging them has evolved.
Context
Firstly, consider the context you’re operating in, much of which is unique to 2020. For example:
· There’s more competition for people’s attention as society re-opens
· Fatigue, uncertainty, stress, impact on mental health – for your audiences as well as internal teams
· People have very varied experiences of, and attitudes to, Covid-19
· Organisations have very varied experiences of 2020
· Some people have screen and online fatigue; whilst there are issues around digital exclusion and data poverty affecting many others.
Has 2020 changed your audiences?
Do your current audiences look the same as they did last year? Or have they evolved organically this year? Have you deliberately changed who you target this year? And who will you be engaging in the future?
Diagram showing potential relationships between pre- and post-Covid audiences.
You might find it useful to map your audiences on the grid above and see how each group relates to the other. There’s no right or wrong answer, but it’s useful to be aware of your situation.
I asked this question in online sessions I ran with museums via the Association of Independent Museums (AIM), South East Museum Development Programme and Museum Development East Midlands in October. Respondents could either answer ‘no’, or one or both of the ‘yes’ options.
Graph showing responses to question about whether 2020 has changed museums’ audiences: 14 said Yes - it’s changed who engages with us; 4 said Yes - we have changed who we are proactively targeting; and 5 said No.
Whilst quite a small sample size (20 respondents total), it was interesting to see the range of responses. The majority found that 2020 has changed who engages with them, without it being a conscious decision on their part. In discussions afterwards, examples given included:
Local interest museums that have found a big increase in engagement from people who live further afield in the UK or abroad, who’ve found the museum due to increased online activity and are interested e.g. as they grew up in the area or have relatives who lived there
Engagement from other museums across the world they have connected with through initiatives like #CuratorBattle on Twitter
A bigger range of people engaging with the museum from new initiatives like contemporary collecting of lockdown stories and creative arts challenges linked to objects from the collections.
Understanding the changes
Recognising that your audiences have changed is a first step.
Aim to understand how they have changed, why and what your new audiences are looking for.
Map what you know, to help you identify any gaps you need to fill. For example:
Who are your audiences and your target audiences?
Are your online audiences different to your in-person audiences?
How did you engage them ‘normally’ / pre-pandemic?
What have you done the past few months to engage them?
Do/will they visit? What do they need in place before a visit?
What are their barriers to engagement or participation online/offline?
What can you do to mitigate these?
What will they want from you in 2021?
How can you meet these needs? Do you need to adjust your audience development and marketing activities as a result?
How can you reach them?
What don’t you know or understand that you need to find out?
You can glean a fair bit from tools like social media analytics, but may also want to delve a bit deeper and undertake your own research to plug any gaps in your knowledge, e.g. run a survey or online focus group to explore more.
If you don’t have the resources to do this, there are also lots of surveys and data out there that you can refer to. For example:
The Family Arts Campaign and Indigo Research ran some interesting research on family audiences and arts attendance in July
ScotInform ran a useful survey on the benefit of online engagement during lockdown for people who had engaged with museums during lockdown
YouGov is running regular polls tracking people’s fears of catching Covid-19
The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA) has been running a series of Attractions Recovery Trackers, looking at how the attractions-visiting public are feeling.
In future blogs I’ll talk more about how to segment audiences in a Covid and post-Covid world, and share some great examples of online and offline engagement from this year.