Targeting our audience

For a city administration responsible to care for all citizens, it can sometimes be challenging to identify a strategy in which to target only specific segments of the population.

The starting point has been for all the cities of the partnership to define a user case story, a short scenario of how a user would benefit from the pilot project developed within the Interactive Cities project. A wide range of funny, romantic, thrilling and exciting stories have been written by each city together with their URBACT Local Group (ULG).
Aside of being a lot of fun, these stories help identifying what is the user case. What was the starting situation? What happened? How did things improve in the city thanks to the use of social media and digital platforms?

Once the user case story was outlined, one can start addressing the targeted audience. Most likely, cities identify to address users with whom they might not yet have managed to collaborate.
Here is an important aspect: if you have not yet managed to speak with a group it means that you will have to change the communication strategy you are currently using. Easier said than done. How do you speak to people you don’t know? How do you are get in contact with them?

Here is the next step, if you already know who your targeted audience is, can you try to describe them? What they do, who do they work with, which places do they frequent, how do they spend their free time… all this will help you identify other people, institutions and places that your targeted audience is already in contact with. Let’s imagine that you identified teenagers as your target group but you have no direct contact with them. Yet, you do have contact with the school they study in, with the youth centre where they spend their free time and with the trendy rap band that is recently a music success in town. They are your influencers: the key people that may create a connection with the user groups. Are you already in contact with any of them? Can they help you communicate with your targeted users?
You will never know if and how they can help you until you ask them, make sure to get them on board of your ULG!

These are all the things that we spoke about during the meeting in Alba Iulia, further news will be available next month when our partner cities will have worked with their ULG in identifying their targeted audience and how to reach them. Keep tuned!

Daniela Patti, Levente Polyak, Simone d’Antonio