Clients often ask us how to establish priorities when it comes to audiences. This makes sense as there are so many audience clusters surrounding any given college or university. You know it may be impossible to reach everyone all the time with your messaging and honestly, you don’t want to. But how do you make choices about what to say to whom and when? Here’s a way you might think about organizing and visualizing all the people with whom you need to connect. This chart will help you in establishing priorities for making choices, creating strategies and building budgets.

In a previous exercise called Your Audience System Organizer, you listed all your constituent groups. If you have not completed that exercise, I encourage you to do that first. You will use that worksheet to inform your audience chart.

Your greatest priority should lie with your primary audience. Peter Drucker reminded us that your primary audience includes the people your mission statement is written for. For most colleges and universities that includes students, faculty and staff. Your investments in marketing with your primary audience will pay the highest dividends. So it’s important to ensure that you are making rabid fans. For more on this, I encourage you to read Chapter 5 in Coherence: How Telling the Truth Will Advance Your Cause (and Save the World). For the purposes of this worksheet, we have already filled in your primary audiences on the Audience Chart. If yours differ, simply write over the ones we have included.

To download the worksheet