Documentaries: Target Audience

There are 3 main reasons why it is important to understand who is most interested in your documentary, for example,

1) Editorial-

If you know who you are targeting towards, it becomes easier to make basic creative decisions during production and during post production. For Example, if you were targeting teenage girls, you would make extra efforts to include teenage girls in your documentary.

2) Distribution/Marketing-

Targeting a select group of people, who you know have an interest in your documentary will allow your marketing to be more successful. Finding and honing in on your audience in the early stages makes the marketing and distribution processes quicker and easier.

3) Funding-

Finally, its a obvious concept that those who are going to view/buy your documentary will become your source of income and funding for future products, advertising etc.

Whilst every documentary will have an entirely different target audience, there are basic starter points to figure out who exactly you should target towards. Whilst your primary target audience will include several groups of people, its important to consider the following demographics:

• Gender
• Age
• Political Views
• Beliefs
• Income
• Race
• so much more!

This can be easily achieved easily once you have identified any core themes within your documentary. For example 'One Direction: This is Us' it going to be primarily targeted towards girls, probably aged 12 plus, whereas 'Inside 9/11' is likely to be targeted towards adults, aged over 18.

It is also important to consider who is going to be affected by your documentary. -For example, their cause might be supported; their values could be validated; their lives will be improved etc. Knowing this information can help you be even more specific in targeting your audience. 

Doing research is perhaps one of the most effective ways of finding your target audience. There are hundreds of documentaries out there, so the chances of something very similar that has already been made is high. Similarly, the chance that there have been articles, blogs etc written on your topic is high. This helps greatly as you can read reviews, information etc and find out first hand who they targeted and if it was successful.

Finally, its important to consider where your film will be shown. This could be in a mainstream cinema, if your documentary has universal appeal, or on a TV channel or community theatres etc. This is the last step in securing your target audience. There is no point in creating audience if you fail to give them the end product.