Researching my target audience

Definition:
In marketing and advertising, a target audience or target group is a group of people that something is aimed to appeal to. A target audience can be people of a certain age group, gender, marital status, etc. (ex: teenagers, females etc.) A certain combination, like women from thirty to forty is often a target audience. Other groups, although not the main focus, may also be interested. Discovering the appropriate target market(s) to market a product is one of the most important stages involved with market research. Without knowing the target audience, a company's advertising and the selling efforts can become difficult and very expensive.

I have got to think about my target audience very carefully as it is a very important stage of the development. I need to sell myself to the world and imagine myself as a solo artist, placing myself in the competitive world of the music industry.

I found this graph to give me an idea of which genre of films are seen as most popular. Even though these are not specifically music videos it shows that Romance, which is the theme on which my music video is based, is ranked third out of fourteen genres. I am pleased with this result as it has given me confidence that it is a popular genre and broad enough for a wide target audience to interact with.



The most apparent factor that came to mind for my music video is age as I think that, generally speaking, my music video will apeal to both genders - female and male. Typically, age ranges break down as follows:

- Kids 5-11,

- Tween 11-14

- Teen 13-16

- 17-21

- 18-24 and 18-34

- 25-54

- 54+

These age ranges can be broken down even more but this is enough to help me decide which age group appeals to my music video the most.

Music video target audience
My own knowledge tells me that music videos appeal to a broad range of ages in the world today. Music videos first became known when The Beatles became an international sensation with 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'Penny Lane' attracting viewers with new, reversed film effects, dramatic lighting and clever editing. When 'Yellow Submarine' was released in 1968, many countries with local pop music and the trend of music videos spread fast. The music video industry continued to grow through the 1970s with bands such as Queen releasing their very successful 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. By the mid 1980s releasing a music video with the artist's new song was seen as standard. I think that this was one of the key points in the industry when music videos really took off when Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' took the industry to a new level.

This means to say that we are looking at most people from age 28 and younger as these were the kids born in the 80s. These people grew up around the evolving music world and in my opinion lived in the best era! Besides these, however, are the younger generation who are more exposed to music videos than anyone else as the industry has just grown and grown.

However, due to the latest technologies I believe that the slightly older generation has become aware of the music industry today. Technologies such as the development of MP3 downloading software (e.g. iTunes) and devices (e.g. iPods, MP3 players), internet access to band pages and music orientated sites such as Myspace, distribution technology such as Bluetooth, DVDs and of course, the development of thousands of music channels on digital and cable TV.

Target audience for my music video
From the research above I came to the conclusion that the target audience is between teenagers aged around 15 to the slightly older generation up to 30 year olds but it is important to keep the subject of my video in mind. As my music video will involve the story of a couple in love resulting in a 'young love' theme the target audience age may lower considerably to around ages 15 - 22. There is strong use of representation in my theme and how young love is portrayed which will attract viewers of the resulting age. In addition, I may cleverly attract back the larger age range as my video will not possess pop music and music of the younger generation but piano music that could be seen as 'film' music that I think all ages will like.