What is our target audience and what messages should we send them? (ch. 3 & 4)

When targeting an appropriate audience to promote your organization, it is normally beneficial to conduct some research and analyze what type of demographic we are trying to reach. Unfortunately, our class does not have the funds to conduct some of that research, but we are able to gain some knowledge from the goals of Safe Harbor and from their website. Since they have programs like REP geared towards teens, part of our audience will be youth groups like high schools and even Clemson's campus. Obviously, the safe homes make the organization geared more towards adult women and their children, but we do not want to completely close off a male audience. The book talks about polling analysis as an easy way to gain opinions of what the community needs. This method would be the most effective for us to gain insight into what Clemson students know or need to know about domestic violence. If a poll could be sent out over email or to teachers on campus, we could gain a lot of wuick factual knowledge about our target audience. Since we are trying to raise awareness for Safe Harbor's cause, our audience should be very large and we should attempt to reach as many people as possible. Events such as the homecoming ribbons and the purple drink night are geared towards students of the Clemson campus and any adults in the Pickens county area. Our library bridge promotions will also raise awareness to our target student audience.

Once we learn the values of our clients and target audiences, we can form messages that mean something to them so that we do not lose their interests. We can also stay away from messages that seem too complex or ask too much of our audience, as the book explains. Asking too much of students is a big issue that we will need to look out for because students are already really busy with extracurriculars and causes of their own. So our main question should be: What will make students want to make domestic violence part of their cause? To answer this, we need to show students that there are simple steps to helping with domestic violence that are neither difficult or time consuming. An example would be wearing a purple ribbon around campus. These messages will become more recognizable to us as we research the target audience a bit more.