Understanding Audience Journeys

Creating impactful content

To create impactful content for your audiences, you need to remember that what they want and need evolves over time. This is based on where they are in their journey.

For example, a person thinking about going to a university 'somewhere' requires different content to someone choosing between a course at Newcastle University or elsewhere.

To make the most of your interactions, you need to be aware of the journey they are taking. And how that affects what they know, and what they don’t.

The phases of the audience journey

Consider the last time you made an important decision that required research. It might have been a purchase, or a holiday decision, or even a new job role.

Your journey started with a general feeling that you wanted to do something. As you did research, you built up more knowledge and refined the parameters and conditions of what you were looking for. And eventually you picked something that satisfied as many of those conditions as possible.

To truly understand your audience’s journey, you need to consider:

• what the typical phases of your audience’s journey are, and where they will encounter them
• what they are feeling and doing at each phase

This helps you to plan content that is not only useful, but also appropriate to their needs and emotions.

Your journey may differ depending on the type of audience you are targeting. But let’s use the example of a journey a prospective student may undertake:

1. Aspiration ('I would like to go to a university one day')
2. Awareness ('The University of X looks like a good option')
3. Interest ('This university offers the programme I want')
4. Credibility ('This university is a great fit for me')
5. Action ('How do I apply to this university?')

You could progress this journey further, by including their university and post-university experience.

Plotting their emotions and needs

By plotting out the user journey, you can gauge the sort of content you need to provide. This helps users navigate from having a vague idea, to choosing you specifically.

Providing information users need is valuable. However, recognising the emotions they are feeling can have a big impact on building strong relationships.

To help you create appropriate content, you can use a table to illustrate what your audience might be feeling, seeing and doing at each stage.

This table may look something like this:

	Aspiration	Awareness	Interest	Credibility	Action	Advocacy
Information needs
Thinking
Feeling
Seeing
Doing
Barriers
Influences
Call to Action

From here, you can ensure that your content not only meets their information needs, but reflects the tone, language and the type of assistance needed. This can build trust and encourage them to take the next step in their journey.