How to define your project’s objective and audience

We’ve recent published advice on how to write briefs for animation and video projects that cover everything from deciding what kind of asset you want to create, to the project budget. We now want to explore two key elements that influence many of the other project brief considerations, the audience and objective. If you want to learn how to define the objective and audience for your next project, take a look at our advice below.

Defining your objective

When starting a new project, the first step is defining the objective. An objective essentially means what you’re hoping to achieve by creating a video or animation. This is often the specific, measurable action a viewer will take after watching your video or animation. The objective of a project falls into two main categories, action-based objectives and knowledge-based objectives.

• Action-based objectives – these objectives revolve around the action a viewer takes after watching a product video, such as sales, website visits or downloads
• Knowledge-based objectives – these objectives focus on the outcome of a viewer watching your content. This could be informational (explainer videos), or educational (training video)

Ask yourself whether you’re you looking to inform, educate, entertain, or engage with your video or animation. Knowing the objective of your project will help to inform the key messages you include in the video or animation script.

Defining your audience

Now you know what kind of video or animation you want to create, you’ll need to understand who it’s being made for. A target audience is simply a particular group of people who you intend to view your video or animation. Defining your target audience can help you to create a video or animation that connect with this specific audience. Below are some of the demographics to consider when defining your target audience.

• Existing customers or service users – when creating videos or animations for existing customers and service users you have the advantage that they already know you brand and offering. Depending on the nature of your business or organisation, your target audience may also have brand loyalty. The type of projects you may create for this demographic are product videos and explainer videos
• New customers or service users – when creating content for this audience you need to keep in mind that they may not be familiar with your brand or offering. When creating product videos or explainer videos for this demographic, outline the problem they may be experiencing and centre how your product or service can provide the solution
• Employees – you may want to create training videos to educate your employees. Like existing customers or service users, employees will already be familiar with your business and in some cases your internal processes and policies
• New starters – when new starters join your organisation you may want to share training videos as part of your onboarding process. This content can act as an introduction to your organisation, your culture, their role, or other key information such as safety training
• Business sector – if you’re creating a video or animation for a B2B audience, they style and tone of voice of your content may differ depending on the business sector of your target audience
• Job title – if you’re developing a video or animation to present key business information to key stakeholders, the job title of your target audience will influence your content
• Age – the age of your target audience will impact the style, tone and content of your project. For example, a video or animation aimed at 10-year-olds will be very different to one aimed at middle-aged adults
• Gender – the gender of your audience is also a consideration. You may want to make a video or animation that caters to all genders, transgender individuals, non-binary individuals, females or males
• Location – lastly, it’s worth knowing the location of your target audience. Many of the videos and animations we produce feature voiceovers. It may be that you want to use a regional voice actor based on the region of your target audience

Once you define who your target audience is, you can use this knowledge to help inform other elements of the project, such as the script, tone of voice and visual style. Each of these can be tailored to suit the needs of your target audience.

How we can help

If you’re exploring a new project and looking for advice, we’re here to help. We work collaboratively with our clients and enjoy offering consultancy during the early stages of a project to ensure the finished piece aligns with your requirements. We combine our expertise and creativity with your professional knowledge to define the message you want to share, and the most effective way to convey that message to your target audience. We’ll then manage the end-to-end production of the project.

We hope that this has given you an understanding of how to define your project’s objective and audience. If you have any questions, or if you think there’s anything we’ve missed, please contact us at info@hyperfinemedia.co.uk.