Target Audience

What is a target audience?

A target audience is the people to whom you cater a particular product or service, in this case a film. It’s the primary group of people that something is aimed at appealing to, the main group that your product is trying to reach to, or the group who will be interested in your product. In simple terms it’s the intended audience. The group of people that an advertising campaign is trying to sell is called the ‘target audience’.

The importance of Target audience in film.

A vital part in marketing your film is making certain that your film is being heard and talked about by people who will mostly likely want to watch it, your target audience.
This will be beneficial as once you’ve found your target audience you can focus your marketing efforts and money on those likely to generate a profitable return.
You won’t target Paranormal Activity to 5 year olds, therefore the more precise and accurate you are in defining your audience the better the chance of creating a movie that they will want to see.

How to identify your target audience?

A target audience is determined by many characteristics, despite the fact that a target audience is defined primarily by gender and age range, a film company will consider the: socioeconomic status, race, family status, occupation and geographic region that will be most interested in the film.

They could also base the target audience on the group that will be more eager and keen to watch the film because of its ability to relate to and appeal to people. This type of targeting is determined by the subject in the film which can include religion, society, politics, novels, music or health issues such as depression, where the subject in the film matches the target group. For example Kidulthood is targeted to the urban youth market because their able to relate to the subjects and issues explored in the film.

This is a smart way of targeting and their various examples of films which do this such as The Chronicles Of Narnia this was originally a novel aimed at children, because this book was meant for children the film would also be targeted to children because of the storyline and the fact they were the original target audience.