Identifying your Audience
Identifying Your Audience
When it comes to identifying your audience, you may ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do a bit of research.
2. Who is interested in your work?
3. Who funds your work?
4. Who does your work impact the most?
5. Who are the “customers?”
6. Who are the “users?”
Do a bit of research
Finding the answers to these guiding questions will require a bit of research. Feel free to browse the internet, talk to your lab mates, principal investigator (PI), or other mentors. It’s always helpful to ask questions when you are unsure about something.
Who is interested in your work?
Knowing who is interested in your work is a pretty simple test to identifying your audience. It could be someone with just a simple scientific curiosity, as in they are curious about the concepts and theories your work is exploring. It could be someone with an interest in the broader implications of your work. Maybe they are interested in how might your work be commercialized, used in the clinic, sold to consumers, or combined with other works to broaden our understanding of some aspect of science or the world around us.
Who funds your work?
Who financially supports your work? Is it a governmental agency? A private donor? A special interest group? And international group? Is your PI using departmental or startup funds? Hopefully finding your funding source doesn’t take too much time. If you are unsure, your PI is certainly the person to ask. You always want to acknowledge your funding sources in your work. You also want to hit discussion points and specific details in your work that are of particular relevance to your funding source. If your funding source specializes on commercializing technologies, then you should include some sort of commercialization plan or always present your work in the broader context of “how can get this device into the hands of people?” If your funding source is particularly interested in basic science, it would helpful if you always include information about “how does this help us understand the world around us” or “how does this combined with this other study help broaden our understanding about this particular subject?” If your funding source is particularly focused on global health, then you want to always highlight how your work solves global health challenges and can be implemented or utilized by different countries around the world.
Who does your work impact the most?
Who will benefit from your work? Is your work problem driven and are you working towards a solution to a specific problem? If so, who stands to benefit the most from your potential solution? Or your solution could be, “my work advances this part of science that was previously untouched.” In that case, what scientific inquiry is your work answering and who does this newfound information help the most?
Who are the customers?
If your work has commercialization potential, who will use it? Would they use it daily? Weekly? Only on certain occasions? Will they purchase your work on behalf of other people? Knowing who are your customers will give you good insight into who might ultimately be impacted by your work or who would naturally find your work of interest. Equipped with this information, it might be helpful to include estimated costs when you are presenting your work to a scientific or even a general audience. You could also present your work with an estimate of how it might save people time, money, and or energy in the long run if they were to adopt your technology in their daily life, business, etc.
Who are the users?
Discovering your users is fairly related to finding your customer. The difference being that in many professional contexts, like a hospital for instance, the person who purchases your work and the person who uses it are different people. A physician may purchase a particular medical device and prescribe it to a patient. Or a teacher may purchase a specific learning tool, but the students are the ones actively using said tool.
