Four elements that determine audience mindset

Understanding how to market to a particular audience is no easy task. To do so, a business must define the audience, before deciding how to communicate to them. The first part of this process is a well trodden one. Most marketers and entrepreneurs are familiar with defining an audience based on demographics, psychographics, geographic information and behavioural characteristics. That said, finding sufficient data to do this with pinpoint accuracy can be extremely challenging.

The second part of this process is much less discovered. As a result, it is common for businesses to leap from a definition of the audience to an understanding of how they think or act. This can lead to undesirable outcomes. Knowing ‘who’ to target is not the same as knowing ‘how’ to target them. It helps, but it doesn’t provide all the answers.

A typical approach to this is by constructing customer personas or archetypes. This can be beneficial, although the personas are not usually based on anything other than subjective judgements. In other words, they are made up for storytelling purposes. Taking a step back, a better way to do this, is by considering how we all think and act, and building groups based on this information. Using this, we’ve identified four elements that determine how people's mindset.

These four elements may explain mindset, but they don’t explain how an audience will view a particular offering. After all, there may be plenty of competitors, or they may have never heard of the business in question. To determine this, we’ve identified seven elements that guide the decision-making process. You can read about them here.

Rooted in human behaviour

The basics of how humans behave are relatively straightforward. We all have neurotransmitters that guide and determine our behaviours. With these in mind, we gradually learn how to behave based on a conditioning towards rewards, and a conditioning away from the opposite. This process is so sophisticated that it happens consciously and unconsciously. After all, if we thought about everything, we wouldn’t be able to function.

So, with this in mind, there are two things that we all keep in mind at all times. The first is our motivations – otherwise known as our ‘passions’. This is pretty obvious. We are guided towards things that excite and reward us. At the same time, we want to avoid things that we don’t like and reduce our ‘worries’ as a result. These grow through time, as children usually worry much less than adults. After all, we learn to realise the impact of wrong decisions through time.

The third element is 'time'. Humans are uniquely able to perceive time. We therefore allocate time based on our personal desires. The judgements then dictates how and where we spend our time.

The final element, ‘affluence’ is also inherently human. It is, of course, an understanding of money and what it means to us. We all have an internal calculator that tots up how much money we have, how much we need, and how much everything costs. If the purchase is business related, then the lens will change to an understanding of the budget available.

Considering them together

Using these four elements, a marketer can build a complete picture of how an audience thinks and acts. The aim therefore is to investigate an audience’s mindset by starting from a behavioural perspective and then support it with data where available.

This research includes

• 2,500 words (6 pages of analysis)

• A full explanation of the four elements.

• A complete analysis of the audience definition process.

• Detailed analysis of how to overcome limitations.

Any questions?