Target Audience Survey Analysis

I conducted this survey to give me feedback from a sample of the general public on what specific aspects I should include in my music magazine. Overall I got feedback from 40 people, which is a good sample size. I already had some initial ideas for my music magazine –i.e. indie music, age range of target audience. However I needed extra information, like price or which title, from potential readers to know what would make it a success.

1.       My magazine is unisex but swaying more feminine and so it was helpful to have 72.5% females and 27.5% male.

2.       Thankfully the majority (55%) of people to take my survey were aged 16-25 which was my initial target audience. This is very helpful because it means almost all of my feedback will be reliable when planning.

3.       This question was to get a rough idea of how much I should charge for my magazine. Most of the people who took the quiz were young students and this category is typically on a smaller income bracket so it wasn’t surprising that the majority (65%) went for the lowest price which was £2.00-£2.99. I felt I couldn’t charge any less than £2.00 as I would need to cover the cost of printing and writing but no more than £4.99 as it is a new magazine which hasn’t established itself in the brutal magazine world.

4.       I analysed some popular magazines and found that they use roughly three to five colours on their front cover. Personally I feel five can look at bit much and so only gave the audience the four options of either three or four colours. The most popular colour was Red / White / Black (as 23 people chose it as their favourite) but its average rating was the lowest (1.9 out of 4). I love this colour scheme but might include one more if I feel the cover needs it to stand out.

5.       Another thing I noticed when analysing the established magazines was that many included competitions or prizes as a way of attracting more readers. However I wasn’t sure if it does work so I included this question to find out.  Yes won with 62.5% of people choosing it. As the difference wasn’t very big I have decided that I will include one or two but mustn’t overload it as quite a few people still said no.

6.       Personally I love to hear about which of my favourite artists are playing near me so I wanted to include a gig list in my magazine. I felt I should confirm it is what my readers wanted too though so I asked this question. I was correct as 92.5% said yes.

7.       I wasn’t sure if people like to read about celebrities as I like to read about some but others I really don’t care about. My results concluded that I should include articles on celebrities as more said yes (17.95%) than no (10.26%), but the majority said sometimes (71.79%). I think this reflects my personal opinion that some are generally interesting people and others are a bit pointless –e.g. reality T.V. stars.

8.       Magazines often feature fashion articles, especially in advertisement, and I feel fashion is often inspired by the music world. The majority (66.67%) said it would interest them and so it is clearly something I need to include.

9.       No one that I asked said they don’t like to be introduced to new bands. 71.05% said yes and 28.95% said sometimes. This is another thing I will include.

10.   The last question I asked was one of the most important because without an iconic name the magazine won’t sell. Ideally the title should end up being a household name (‘Q’, ‘Rolling Stones’ and ‘Kerrang’ to name a few). Also I wanted my name to have some meaning behind it (for example, Kerrang is an onomatopoeia as it is the sound of a guitar) and so I came up with four musical names. The name with the highest average rating was Bassline (2.69) but the one with the highest votes was Echo (35.9% chose it as their favourite name) closely followed by White-Label (30%). My favourite is White-Label because I think it has the best reference to music, it is a vinyl record which is supplied with a plain white label before general release for promotional purposes.

Conclusion

My results have been very reliable as I asked such a big group of people in the age bracket that my target audience is in so it is accurate to what my readers would want. I now know I should create a magazine priced at around £2.00-£2.99 that should include some references to winning prizes, and some articles about interesting (or popular to a teen audience) celebrities.

This survey has been very helpful and informative as I now have a much better understanding about what to include and the colour scheme, even though I  didn’t ask loads of questions.