Interested in engaging young audiences? Or just curious to know the age profile of your current audiences? Your Audience Finder survey dashboard is a great place to start.
The Audience Finder survey asks your visitors which age group they fall in to. As these age groups are standardised across all organisations’ surveys (and in line with the UK Census), you can begin to compare the age profile of your visitors both to other arts organisations, and to your local population.
N.B. It’s worth remembering that the Audience Finder survey is not designed to be completed by young people under the age of 16, and any responses from under-16s are removed from the results. Therefore ‘young audiences’ in this context only refers to those aged 16+.
Get to know your current audience
In the Surveys section of your Audience Finder dashboard, you’ll find a Visitor Profile sub-menu. Open this up and you’ll see the option to explore the age profile of your survey respondents.
Don’t forget that if you have more than one year’s survey data in Audience Finder, you can switch between years and see if (and how) your audience’s age profile has changed over time.
Put your data in context
A next useful step is to compare the age profile of your survey respondents to the general population - you can do this by selecting census data as a comparator at the top of your age profile page.
How does your age profile align with the general population? Are young people well-represented among your audiences, or are older age groups more prevalent?
You might also want to think about what you can learn about your young audiences’ behaviour from the data. For example, you may have high numbers of 16-24s, but a significant under-representation among 25-34s. Ask why this might be happening – perhaps it’s because you have an active student audience who are then moving away as they get older?
Decide where and how to take action
Putting your data in context like this will help clarify where best to focus your efforts and allow you to start thinking about setting some realistic goals for the future.
And when it comes to planning effective practical action to engage young audiences, the Audience Spectrum profiles might help identify this for you. For example, young people are commonly Experience Seekers and motivated by opportunities to socialise – so what could you do to facilitate a social experience for them? Have a look at the ‘How to Engage’ section of the pen portraits for more ideas.
Track progress
As you build up more survey data in Audience Finder, you’ll be able to track any changes in the age profile of your audience over time, giving you a sense of how well your engagement tactics are working.
If you are looking for further support in getting started with implementing your data, we have personalised 1-2-1 sessions available to book with our team.