“I feel the course covered more than just an ‘introduction’, which was a benefit. It was a perfect combination of general and specific examples.”

Aim of the workshop

For many organisations, audience development sits somewhere between marketing your services or activities, education, public events and outreach. Audience development is about understanding who engages with you and what you do (and why), who doesn’t – and why – and what steps you can take to reach out to those people you’d like to see coming along or connecting with you. It’s about how best to connect with them and how best to make sure what you do appeals to them. This course takes you through each of these steps, in overview and in ways you can apply within your own organisation.

Who is it for?

For people new to audience development responsibilities or those currently carrying out the role who need a more secure grounding for their skills. Also for those interested in developing the strategic vision for their organisation and who want to understand where audience development adds to the long-term sustainability of their work.

Workshop outline

By the end of the day participants will have a better understanding of:

• What audience development is and why it is important
• Who (else) you want your audience to be, and why they are not yet there
• The main barriers for these people, in what you do and how you communicate it
• The steps you can take to overcome these barriers and develop and diversify your audiences, clients or customers.
• Identify the purpose of your communications activity at any given moment.
• Learn how to choose the most appropriate channels and techniques for what you want to achieve.
• Practice some of the techniques discussed, in an ‘action-learning’ scenario.

Workshop format

This is a full-day workshop with access to online resources afterwards. The workshop is delivered through group work, exercises, tutor-led discussion, Q&A and resources. Participants are encouraged to share your own experiences, problems and ideas.

Where next?

This workshop will include reference to some of the specific communications skills, which are covered in practical depth in my short seminars as required (see separate information). It would also be reinforced by either a one-to-one surgery session or a limited number of one-to-one mentoring hours (by phone and email) to support you in putting the lessons learned into practice.