Intended Audience: How to Write for Your Intended Audience

An intended audience refers to the demographic that writers expect will read and interact with their workーwhether it be an article, research paper, or book. When reflecting on your intended audience, consider factors such as age, geographic location, culture, and education. Your intended audience may be a wider, general group of people from different backgrounds or a narrow, specific set of individuals with similar interests. For instance, journalists write for the general public, so their intended audience is often more diverse than those who write single-story genres, such as science-fiction novels.

Understanding your intended audience before you begin the writing process will help you curate and present your content understandably and engagingly. For instance, if you’re writing for a younger demographic, you may use shorter paragraphs and chapters to maintain their attention span.

However, if your intended audience is older and accustomed to academic writing, you may choose to write longer, more complex paragraphs. Thus, the target group influences numerous aspects of writing, including word choice, length, tone, and style.

You can also better connect with your audience on a meaningful level if you understand who is reading your piece. Researching your intended audience will help you find common ground and include impactful details that are relevant to your readers.

Identifying your intended audience starts with research:

• Establish your purpose: Before researching your intended audience, ask yourself what you want to achieve with your content. Are you aiming to educate, persuade, or entertain? Establishing the purpose of your piece will put you in the best position to identify your intended audience.
• Review competitors’ content: Analyzing your competitors’ readerships is a simple way to start researching your intended audience. Considering what did and didn’t work for your competitors can help you better understand how to engage with your intended audience.
• Conduct an audience analysis: Audience analysis is the process of researching your audience and developing writing strategies that appeal to your target demographic. Outline your target age group, education level, and geographic location when developing your audience analysis to gather as much background information as possible. From there, research content forms that appeal to your intended audience: Social media is a great source for reviewing the type of content different demographics enjoy. As you learn about your audience, outline their knowledge of your content topic and their attitude toward it.
• Expand your reach: While it’s important to identify and research your intended audience, it’s also a good idea to consider secondary readers—individuals outside your main demographic who may also read your content. Understanding different readerships can help you expand your reach as a writer and help you promote your work across a wider audience base.
  

Several factors define an intended audience; while writers with a specific audience categorize their readership by occupation or lifestyle, most classify their general audience by age. While there are many types of target audiences, here are the most common in fiction:

1. 1. Children: Readers under the age of twelve are the target audience for children’s books. However, within this category, there is a wide spectrum and range of writing styles. For example, books for preschoolers have more pictures and interactive elements than chapter books for children ages eight and older.
2. 2. Young adults: Early tweens and teenagers comprise the young adult (YA) readership. While anyone can read YA books, the intended audience for this category is readers between twelve and eighteen. Often, YA fiction uses the coming-of-age narrative to reflect common adolescent experiences. Learn more about literary themes.
3. 3. New adults: New adult (NA) fiction focuses on readers between the ages of eighteen and thirty. In NA fiction, protagonists, or main characters, often encounter obstacles that individuals in early adulthood experience, such as leaving home, starting a new career, or finding love.
4. 4. Adults: Adult fiction audiences are thirty and older, and therefore the writing style for this demographic is often worldly and more complex. In fiction writing for adults, the protagonist typically has reflective and introspective inner thoughts. The themes of the story are also mature and relevant to readers who have more life experiences.

After identifying your intended audience, it’s important to develop writing strategies that align with your demographic.

1. 1. Create an audience profile: An audience profile creates a detailed image of your intended audience, outlining your readership’s general likes, dislikes, attitudes, education levels, and geographic location. Creating a clear image of your intended audience will help you organize your writing in a way that appeals to them.
2. 2. Develop areas for connection: After creating your audience profile, review it to highlight potential areas for connection. Finding commonalities between you and your readers provides you with the opportunity to share relevant experiences and develop a personable tone. Finding common ground will also help you establish credibility, as readers are more likely to trust you when you share and reflect.
3. 3. Provide value: Regardless of your intended audience, it’s important to provide value to your readers. Solving a problem for your readers or providing an interesting story keeps your audience reading and makes your content stand out from the competition.
4. 4. Be engaging: Along with providing quality information to your readers, it’s important to keep them engaged. Incorporate sensory details to create vivid images in your writing. You can also use terms that are popular with your target audience to maintain their attention.

In marketing, the intended audience has a different meaning and purpose than in the literary world. In marketing, an intended audience indicates the target consumer for a specific product or service. Marketers research a company’s target market to develop a business plan and marketing strategy that encourages potential customers through the buyer’s journey, or the process by which every potential customer decides on a product or service.

In literature, an intended audience refers to the demographic that a writer expects to read and interact with their book, short story, academic paper, article, or novella.

Become a better writer with the MasterClass Annual Membership. Gain access to exclusive video lessons taught by the world’s best, including Malcolm Gladwell, Neil Gaiman, Walter Mosley, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Dan Brown, and more.