How to Communicate With Your Target Audience

When planning an event it’s important to determine who your target audience is before creating and sending any communications. Some questions to consider might be:

1. Who would this event be relevant to?
2. Who might benefit the most from attending this event?
3. What is the goal of this event?
   1. To teach?
   2. To learn?
   3. To network?
   4. To socialize?

Answering the questions above will hopefully help you determine your target audience which will allow you to better shape your messaging. When crafting any promotional materials for your event (social media posts, invitations, flyers) it’s important to speak the language of your target audience:

1. How can I best reach my target audience?
   1. Social media?
   2. Email invitations?
   3. Hard copy invitations?
   4. All of the above?
2. Understand their needs and why your event will benefit them.
   1. Let’s use students as an example: Students need mentorship so they can better succeed in their careers. Your event will feature a panel of alumni who will speak about their careers and how they got there! Students will benefit from the knowledge and information the panelists will share which will help them in their future careers.
   2. You would then use that information to help write your communication to speak directly to your target audience's needs.

Once you have determined your target audience and how you want to communicate with them, you need to find them. This might be email addresses or even various social media groups. The School of Social Work is not able to share information about alumni with you unless we have permission from the individuals, for that reason, we can not provide you with email addresses. If you want to communicate with your target audience via email, I recommend the following:

1. Use AlumniFire to send messages, post on the feed or in private groups asking folks to share their email addresses with you. 
2. Reach out to fellow alumni you already know to see if they will share contact information with you.
3. Create social media posts that say “For more information, contact XYZ.”