Once your organisation’s identity has been created through visuals and messaging, it’s time for your audience to interact with it. Let’s explore the journey your audience takes as it learns about and interacts with your organisation.
Once your organisation has developed a brand strategy and has aligned its identity to reflect that strategy, it’s time to start sharing about your organisation with your target audience. In doing so, though, we want to make sure we are giving your audience the best possible experience with your organisation. When they’re looking to learn more about your services and offerings, we want them to know exactly how to find the information they’re interested in. It’s important that they don’t get confused or lost along the way.
The process of your audience first learning about your organisation to taking steps toward getting involved with it in a deeper way is called the audience journey. An audience journey typically includes 5 stages, with smaller steps in each stage along the way. These stages are Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Advocacy.
Audience JourneyAwareness is when your target audience realizes that something is missing from their life. They have some sort of challenge that your organisation can help solve. At this stage, your organisation wants to offer hope in some sort of solution. You aren’t trying to convince them that you’re the only solution, but you want them to become aware that there are resources or organisations that can help.
In the consideration stage, your audience is looking at the options available to them. They are aware that they have a problem, hopeful that there might be a solution, and they begin to research what solutions are available to them. While your audience is in the consideration stage, you want to make sure that they can find your organisation. If they find another organisation that is better suited for them, then that’s great! But your organisation is likely the best choice to serve certain people, and we want to make sure those people can find you.
The third stage is the decision stage. Your audience has explored the options available to them and is now ready to engage with an organisation. Again, as mission-minded organisations, we all share a goal of furthering God’s Kingdom. We are not trying to be competitive with one another. Rather, we want our audience to be informed and able to make the decision that’s best for them. It’s important to supply them with all the information they’ll need to make the decision that best suits them.
The following stage is retention. This is when your audience has interacted with your organisation, has had a good experience, and chooses to continue to interact with it. At this stage, it’s important for organisations to continue communicating with their audiences and inviting them back.
The last stage is the advocacy stage. This is when your audience is so fond of your organisation, that they become a champion of it, recommending it to others. This is wonderful way to grow your impact.
The purpose of mapping out an audience journey is to better understand your audience’s experience throughout each of these stages. By doing so, you’ll be able to not only gain empathy for what your audience is going through but also have a deeper understanding of how to make your audience’s journey the best experience possible.
One of the best ways to learn about creating the ideal audience journey is by example, so in the next activity, we’ll map out the audience journey for Renew Maternal Care together. Then, you’ll be given the opportunity to do so for your organisation.