The Link Between Watching TV & Targeting Our Business Audiences
The increase in the platforms to reach our audiences is similar to TV viewing figures over the years.
The landscape where we use media is changing at a rate we’ve never seen before. The days of sticking to a few channels that work for us are well and truly gone.
We are now overwhelmed with the platforms to target our audiences. During my formative years within the brand/marketing industry and part of an agency managing a well-known cinema chain, the ways to promote during launch were always the same trusted routes ie. press advertising, large format print, TV ads and a bit of direct mail. Move ahead 10 or so years and the ability to reach consumers has increased tenfold.
This movement is not only seen in our pursuit to grow our businesses and becoming recognised as the authority within our marketplace, but within the UK in general. The ways to reach audiences has changed massively and our options to engage and interact provide choice, but it is also easy to fade into the distance.
Lets take British TV and the fracturing of the media landscape. So far, this years most watched TV programme was the Britain’s Got Talent final with an average audience of just over 11 million viewers to see Attraction run away with this years crown. However, lets track some of the most watched TV over the years.
The biggest TV event so far during this decade was the 2011 Royal Wedding with a combined BBC/ITV audience of 26 million viewers. However, this falls down the pecking order with the all time biggest audience being the 1966 World Cup with 32.3 million viewers, followed by the funeral of Diana Princess of Wales in 1997 with an audience of 32.1 million viewers.
What this shows is that viewing is now being split among many more channels and the most difficult task for businesses is getting to grips with the countless ways to reach their audiences.
We can’t reach those we’d like to in the old ways that we could rely on and stick to (thankfully). The challenge is to now be imaginative and stick out from the rest who shuffle for attention by self-promotion and bribe us to like, follow, read, download, watch and subscribe (by the way when was there ever monetary value on subscribing to a FREE newsletter??).
We need to promote and build respect to the people we find and who want to stay with us. It’s not a case of finding one method to fit everyone, but understanding how business audiences finds their information, their preferences for what channels they resonate with and what motivates them to commit.
