Blog 2 - Target Audience

I have carefully considered the profile of the readership for my dance music publication. My first port of call for information was on the National Readership Survey Website (www.NRS.co.uk). The organization provides estimates of the number and habits of people buying newspapers and magazines in the UK. They survey over three hundred titles. The information is gathered through interviewing large sample of the general public aged above 15 years. Unfortunately as far as I could see they do not cover dance magazine in their portfolio. However I did manage to glean some important pointers about demographics. This is a way of classifying people into social groups according to the job of the man breadwinner in the household. The classifications are as follows

A High Ranking Professionals; lawyers & doctors
B Middle Ranking Professionals; middle managers in business teachers etc
C1 White Collar (Office workers, junior managers, office clerks, bank clerks, nurses
C2 Skilled manual workers, carpeners, electricians
D Semi and unskilled manual workers; drivers, post sorters, labourers
E People subsisting on state benefits, the unemployed, pensioners

I intend to target my magazine toward the housholds of the first three social groups as I feel they will have the disposable income to spend on clubbing and the intellect to appreciate the music. This is a sweeping generalization though and therefore has limited value. The study considers class and not earning power.

I turned my attention to classification of people by consumer personality types. This is known as psychographic. I learned that consumers groups may be categorized as follows:

Main streamers - They go with the flow & don’t want to stand out

Aspirers - They want to have more money or status and will often buy flashy products to try and send messages out about status

Succeeders - They have more money to spend than aspirers but won’t need to show it as much

Individualists - They want to show the world they are different
Carers - They want to save the world.



Based on the above definitions I feel that my target audience will be a combination of aspirers and individualists. Dance music is a niche market of the music industry. It is a specialist market as opposed to mainstream like pop and rock. I think the people involved in dance music are young and single, probably in their early twenties. They are likely to have left college and secured their first job. I doubt they have children or dependents. They may be living at home or sharing rented accommodation with friends so they have a high amount of disposable income. They have tons of energy and their main priority is life is fun and partying. They enjoy socializing and thrive on their independence. I think they will be fit, energetic and conscious of their look. I think they will go to the clubs with a large group of friends rather than someone they are in an established relationship. A big draw for the dance music consumers will be clubbing on holiday. This is as good as it gets – hot weather, a focus on fun and massive amount of freedom with like minded people. I would use the acronym YAKS to descrtibe my target audience – Young Adventurous Keen and Single. My target audience is out for a good time.

Unfortunatly after searching through the NRS website and readership surveys i could find any specific data on any magazines in the same genre but too show how it works here is a screenshot of what a typical readship survey looks like.



We can follow the table easy and using the demographcs i have listed above we can put that into place. It shows the general wealth of the average buyer, their age and what gender they are. Furthermore it tells us how succesful the magazine is.

Too find my target audience i will research popular dance magazine websites and see if i can gather infomation on who their target audience is and then i can relate it too mine. The first magazine i will inspect is titled 'Mixmag' (http://www.mixmag.net/)



This is a quote i found on the Media pack / advertisement section on the website. This reinforces what i found out earlier showing that my target audience is young and vibrant.



The front page of the website is bright and colourful. A youthful green headmasts the page with a bold black title. The background of the website is black and there is a ice cold blue and fresh white colour that goes down the side there is also a yellow background for a sub title too. All of which indicate that my target audience is young and upbeat. The style of the font is quiet modern, yet readable the different sizes make it interesting and it highlights stories of different importance, there is alot going on alot like what a younger audience would like too see. It is much less uniform that a magazine that was directed at older people. The text on the front page is quite informal and it includes alot about technology, not only because its a dance magazine which generally involves lots of technology but because it wants to be modern and appeal to young fashionable people.