Audience development plans: who to target, how to reach them, and how to evaluate success.

Often fuelled by robust market studies and insightful segmentation, audience development plans lay out your strategies for reaching and engaging your target audiences, and connect those strategies to your overall vision, mission and objectives as a cause-led organisation. We work with you to help define your priority audiences (often using Culture Segments as our guide), and – using the rich findings from primary research into your current and potential audiences’ motivations and barriers to attendance – create actionable strategies for reaching, communicating with, engaging with and building relationships with these groups.

Serving as your guide to aid ongoing strategic decision-making around audiences, our audience development plans are often distilled into punchy one-page documents that start with your cause – why you do what you do – then lay out what you’ll do to live that cause (whether that’s attracting more or different audiences or engaging them more deeply with your offer), describe the building blocks of how you’ll do it, and – in enumerating the outcomes you hope to see as a result of your audience engagement actions – link the evaluation of your successes back to that original cause.

Symphony Space – a strategy to grow and delight audiences

Our research showed Symphony Space had great potential to grow audiences in the Affirmation and Expression Culture Segments. Using our insight, the team has optimised brochure design and refreshed interior spaces to better connect with their target segments.

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Future-proofing Mansfield’s culture services

In the face of Covid pressures, the commercial models underpinning Mansfield’s cultural venues needed deep interrogation. But balancing the books couldn’t come at the expense of the service’s core purpose

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The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust – Culture Segments in action

"Before, when promoting an offer, we used to ask ‘Who is it for?’ and were often told ‘Everyone!’. That doesn’t happen anymore.” The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

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Also see

Market studies

Get robust assessments of the full size, profile and motivations of your potential market.

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Exhibition testing & strategy

Our holistic approach to formative and summative exhibition evaluation provides visitor insights that underpin solid strategies for success.

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    Tell us about your audience development needs

    Want to reinvent your audience strategy but not sure where to start? We’d be delighted to have an informal chat with you. Just complete the form on the left and one of our consultants will be in touch to discuss your situation (with no obligation).