Guide: How to Identify Your (Event) Audience

Danil
Oct 3
5 min read

Too Expensive Knowledge

When you study methods for identifying a target audience and gathering information about it, most practices and sources focus on approaches that are valid and effective, but not always realistic for small teams.

Conducting detailed marketing research.

You’re supposed to gather quantitative and qualitative data about your target market: demographics, preferences, habits. Run surveys (DIY or via contractors), organize panels, or buy ready-made reports.

A solid approach, but it takes a lot of money, time, and expertise.

Analyzing past events and competitor data.

Looking at who attended similar events, what worked, and what didn’t helps spot patterns and avoid mistakes. But it still requires access to relevant data and time for analysis.

And yes, attending relevant events yourself is always a good idea. Benchmark with your feet 🦿

Running audience surveys and focus groups.

These can uncover real motivations and expectations. Deep insights, sure, but often hard to recruit for, and they demand facilitation and analysis skills you may not have in-house.

Tracking social platforms.

Likes, shares, comments, and other platform metrics can show what your audience reacts to. But this only works if you already have an engaged presence or can monitor active communities.

Using CRM, analytics, and segmentation tools.

Great for organizing contacts, tracking behavior, and segmenting users. Precise, yes, but they demand infrastructure, setup time, skills and (again) money.

Let’s cover the basics: Why Do You Need to Know Your Audience?

In general, you need to know the answers (at different levels of detail) to three questions:

Who is the target audience for my business, organization, program, or project — the one within which we’re planning this event?
Who should I invite to the event to actually achieve my goals?
How can my event attract our ideal attendees? (more on this in other posts)

Remember,

If you think everyone is your audience, you don’t have one

What does knowing your audience give you?

Better Event Planning

Planning an event is about making choices: what to prioritize and what to skip. Understanding your audience gives you a clear focus and sets boundaries for your efforts, ensuring that every decision serves their needs and avoids unnecessary distractions.

Improved Marketing

Identifying your target audience allows you to craft marketing messages that resonate with them directly. And it makes setting up marketing campaigns much more manageable. How can you effectively target your ads without at least a hypothesis about your target audience?

Efficient Use of Resources

Limited budget? Knowing your audience helps you spend strategically, focusing on what brings the most impact instead of wasting time and money on guesswork. Deciding where to put a €300 ad budget is critical if that’s your only €300.

Increased Attendee Satisfaction

When an event is tailored to meet attendees' specific needs and interests, they are more likely to enjoy and be satisfied with their experience. This leads to higher attendee retention rates and enhances the event's reputation.

Building Stronger Connections

Understanding your target audience's specific needs, preferences, and pain points can help you create more personalized and meaningful interactions. This helps build stronger connections and loyalty, fostering a community that feels valued and understood.

Self-care

In small teams with few resources, just being clear about who it’s for sometimes changes everything. Burning yourself out while feeling like everything you do is a lottery is the wrong path. Accepting trade-offs, working extra hours, making compromises... it all feels more meaningful when those actions are tied to a deliberate decisions about your audience.

What’s good to know

Audience demographics

This is the base layer. For example, if your ideal attendees are local professionals in a traffic-heavy city center, pick a venue that’s easy to reach by public transport. If your audience is parents with kids or kids themselves (one day I’ll explain why I don’t like doing children’s events 😀), then make sure the venue has what they need: stroller access, family restrooms, or a room to change a child.

Audience needs and pain points

What does your audience actually want? What hurts? How does your event solve that problem? This directly shapes the content, format, venue, and marketing. Even drafting these as hypotheses is already a step forward.

Preferred communication channels

So you don’t (for the love of god!) waste money on a news-site banner or Instagram ads when your audience is actually teenagers spending their time on Snapchat.

Accessibility needs

Physical needs: Does your audience include people who might need step-free access, elevators, or accessible restrooms?
Digital needs: Are there attendees who aren’t comfortable with tech, who face age-related barriers, or who lack the right devices?
Sensory needs: Will some people need quiet spaces, clear sound, or materials in formats like large print or braille?
Communication needs: Does your audience prefer plain language, visual aids, or information delivered in multiple formats or lanuages?
Financial aspect: Can people actually afford to participate? I once registered for a conference about something related to accessibility and inclusivity where lunch was €40. Glad they let me opt out — but a conference about inclusivity didn’t feel so inclusive 😀

Audience routines and timing

When is your audience actually free? Office workers won’t show up at 3 p.m. on a weekday. Parents are unlikely to commit late in the evening. Students might prefer weekends or online formats. Sometimes it’s not about the content at all, it’s about fitting into people’s real lives.

How to Gather Information About Your Audience

Review past attendees

If you’ve hosted similar events before, start with what you already have. Analyze attendee demographics, feedback, and engagement.

Use your ticketing or registration platform, ad tools like Meta Ads Manager, and whatever else you already work with.

And hopefully you’re running attendee surveys during or after events. They’re one of the easiest (and free) ways to learn a lot.

Analyze competitors’ events

If you’re new to event planning or don’t have past data, look at similar events hosted by others.

Check their websites, social media channels, content formats, and audience engagement. Pay special attention to the comments under their posts, 'cause sometimes that’s a goldmine of insight. Take notes and look for patterns you can apply.

Consult your colleagues and external experts

Reach out to peers or industry experts with experience in similar events. Ask them about their audience, where they find them, and what marketing strategies worked. Just avoid bothering those who are planning competing events at the same time. Be a good guy!

Survey your mailing list (if you have one)

If you’re using email marketing, review your analytics or run a quick pre-event survey. Even simple questions about people’s background, interests, and expectations can give you a sharper picture.

Analyze internal resources

Go through your organization’s marketing plans, strategies, or any other relevant documents. Even if you don’t find detailed audience data, you’ll at least come out with a working hypothesis about who your event is really for.

Common sense approach

Don’t overcomplicate it. Sometimes it’s really that simple. And sometimes, you already know more about your audience than you think.

If you’re working with limited resources — money, people, time — many of these methods become inaccessible, overly complex, or just too slow.

So let’s step back and focus on what is possible.

What practical ways do we have to identify and understand our audience, especially for events, when operating under real-world constraints?

This isn’t a full-stack research strategy.

It’s a lean, flexible approach for people who work with what they’ve got.