Audience research

Cover:

• Mainstream or niche - why?
• Defining: demographics/psychographics/specialist interest
• Primary and secondary
• What’s your competition? What’s your USP?

Mainstream or Niche?

A niche market is a focused and directly targeted market and tend to be small but well defined and specific. This can be based on the product being sold and can vary based on the targeted audience based on price, quality or differentiation strategies. Since the targeted audiences are usually small, even though there is a specific portion, the profit margins are on the high end. Niche markets are targeted by identifying the needs and requirements which are not being met by the mainstream market and then aiming to satisfy these with products or services. In niche marketing, the company aims to sell to specific people and targets their way of promoting the product specifically to the needs of people not being met by mainstream and develops products and services which are specifically customised and tailored to meet the needs of this group of people, resulting in a strong brand image.

In a Mainstream Market, products and services appeal to a broader group of society, and the products and services are readily available to the general public. The company tries to include all the desires of the entire market into one product type. An advantage of this is that the producer can close down the market for other competitors. However different marketing mix strategies need to be put in place to reach target audiences. Also, multiple products need to be produced.

In terms of music video production, I think it's best for me to cater to a niche target audience because it makes it easier to focus on a specific group of people i want to cater to. having such a wide range audience means that i have to cater to all of them and this could mean that the themes i use have to be generalised and bland in order to have some sort of engagement with my entire target audience - i would have to many people to cater to so i can't do anything radical or out of the box. Moreover, having a niche target audience allows me to be more creative and explore different and unique concepts not a lot of people have done.

My target audience is 16-24 / Male / Aspirers/explorers / D/E / Rap fans.

Demographics, Psychographics and Specialist interest: 

Demographics are the information used to classify and audience and these groups are usually race, age, gender, socio-economic status, location and others. Demographics are split into bands depending on people job's or status and are shown in a demographic table. This table separates people into groups depending on the profession they currently work as. the bands are labelled using letters - A being at the top of the food chain and E at the bottom. The reason why there is 2 different types of Cs is because these workers roughly share the same socio-economical status however, jobs in C1 are jobs that require more education and qualifications compared to C2. For my music video, i have chosen to target it at people in D/E class and this is because, typically, it's younger people who listen to rap and they are likely unemployed or work jobs that require no skill or qualification.

Psychographics is the segmentation that divides people into groups in terms of their social class, lifestyle and personality characteristics. it is based on the idea that the types of products you consume will reflect your characteristics and living status. similar to demographics, psychographics is split into bands and are put into a table. Each group is labelled by plural nouns and are separated by what these type of people seek in life, their general characteristics and what demographic they would fall in. I have chosen to target my music video at Aspirers and Explorers because these type of people seek status and are materialistic. In typical music videos, they always glorify money and expensive clothing in either their lyrics or the music video and this is a very materialistic trait however, it's what teens and younger adults are into so, in order to cater to their audience, it's a good idea to include what the audience show so much interest in. I have also chosen explorers because they seek discovery and are more likely to be into more niche and different things. Because i want my music video to be different to a typical music video, i feel it would appeal to them more. Plus, explorers are typically students and that demographic falls into my target audience.

My specialist interest will be rap fans and this is because the genre of music I will be using to make my music video is Rap.

bibliography:

• UKEssays. November 2018. Niche Market vs Mainstream Market. [online]. Available from: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/marketing/niche-market-and-mainstream-market-marketing-essay.php?vref=1 [Accessed 25 March 2019].