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Audience Segmentation and Storytelling in Science Communication

  • Writer: Nii Mahliaire, Ph.D.
    Nii Mahliaire, Ph.D.
  • Jan 3
  • 11 min read

Updated: Jul 13

Science has the potential to spark curiosity, fuel progress, and address the world’s biggest challenges. Yet too often, important discoveries remain out of reach, buried in technical language and lengthy reports. To truly make a difference, we need to bring these insights into everyday conversations—where people can understand, connect, and find value in them. This begins with knowing our audience and telling stories that speak to their experiences and interests in a way that feels relevant and relatable.


Why Audience Segmentation Matters in Science Communication


Audience Segmentation and Persona Development for Science Communicators

Knowing who you're talking to is the first step toward meaningful communication.

Think of trying to tune a radio—without knowing the right frequency, you'll only hear static. Audience segmentation in science communication is like finding the right channel to reach each group, allowing messages to resonate rather than get lost in the noise. By grouping the audience by shared traits, we can make sure information lands in a way that matters to them.


Why Segment Your Audience?

  • Relevance: Tailored messages are more likely to address the specific interests and concerns of your audience.

  • Engagement: When people feel that content speaks directly to them, they're more likely to pay attention and interact.

  • Efficiency: Focus your resources on strategies that work best for each segment rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.


 How to Segment Audiences Effectively


Let's look deeper into how you can effectively segment your audience and develop personas that bring your audience to life.


Identify Segmentation Criteria

To tailor your message effectively, start by identifying the criteria that will guide your audience segmentation. Each audience is unique, and choosing the right factors—whether demographic, psychographic, or behavioral—can help ensure your communication aligns with their needs and interests. Here are some of the most common criteria and examples of how they can shape your approach: 


Demographics: Age, Gender, Education Level, Location

To effectively segment your audience, first identify the criteria most relevant to your communication goals. Common criteria include demographics, such as age, gender, education level, and location. Age can impact the type of content that resonates; for instance, younger audiences might engage more with interactive formats like quizzes or games. Education level helps guide the complexity of language and concepts—for example, explaining quantum physics will differ greatly when speaking to high school students versus graduate students. Location is also important, as geographic context can shape interests and concerns; a coastal community, for example, may be more invested in marine conservation efforts.


Psychographics: Values, Beliefs, Interests, Attitudes 

Values and beliefs are another key factor, as understanding what matters most to your audience can shape how receptive they’ll be to your message. For instance, an audience that values sustainability is more likely to engage with topics related to renewable energy. Similarly, aligning content with interests and hobbies can increase relevance—using sports analogies, for example, may resonate well with fitness enthusiasts. Lastly, consider attitudes toward science, which affect trust and engagement levels; with skeptical audiences, it may be essential to emphasize credibility and strong evidence to build trust.


Behavioral Factors: Actions and Habits like Media Usage, Lifestyle Habits

Behavioral factors, such as actions and habits, are also essential in audience segmentation. Media usage helps determine the most effective platforms to reach your audience—whether they’re more active on Instagram, Twitter, or prefer email newsletters. Lifestyle habits, like daily routines, influence how and when people engage with content; for example, commuters might prefer podcasts they can listen to during their travels. Understanding these behavioral nuances enables you to deliver content in ways that fit seamlessly into your audience's daily lives.


Collect Data on Your Audience

Effective segmentation starts with understanding who you’re trying to reach. By collecting data on your audience, you gain the insights needed to shape messages that connect. Here are some key methods for gathering this information, along with their strengths and limitations:


Surveys and Questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are useful tools for gathering direct input from your audience. By designing short, targeted surveys that ask about interests, preferences, and habits, you can capture specific data on audience behaviors. Offering an incentive, such as a small reward or discount, can also help improve completion rates. Surveys provide quick, quantitative feedback, making them useful for confirming assumptions or getting direct answers to specific questions. However, it’s essential to keep surveys concise—long surveys tend to discourage participation, which can result in incomplete data. Additionally, respondents may answer quickly without much thought, which can sometimes lead to biased or less meaningful insights.


Social Media Analytics

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn offer analytics tools that help you understand audience demographics and engagement patterns. For example, Facebook Insights provides data on post performance and follower demographics, showing you what resonates most with your audience. While TikTok will show you trending topics, songs, or edits. Social media analytics are valuable for real-time feedback, allowing you to track engagement trends and adjust your content based on what’s capturing attention. However, these analytics focus on platform-specific behavior and don’t necessarily represent your audience’s broader habits or interests outside of social media. Relying solely on this data can limit your understanding of your audience’s full range of needs and preferences.


Website Metrics

Tools like Google Analytics give detailed insights into how users interact with your website, including which pages attract the most attention, how long visitors stay, and what sources drive them to your site. This information helps you understand what topics engage your audience and can guide future content creation. Website metrics provide a quantitative snapshot of user interests and engagement patterns, making it easy to identify popular content and areas for improvement. However, metrics alone don’t explain why users behave in certain ways, which can make it challenging to interpret the data fully without additional qualitative insights.


Interviews and Focus Groups

Interviews and focus groups offer a way to gather in-depth, qualitative feedback directly from your audience. Through one-on-one or group discussions, you can explore your audience’s thoughts on specific topics, gaining more understanding of their needs and interests. This approach provides detailed insights that other methods may miss, such as motivations and opinions that give context to quantitative data. However, interviews and focus groups are more time-consuming and often require skilled facilitators to minimize bias and encourage open, honest dialogue. Additionally, because these discussions involve smaller groups, findings may not be fully representative of your entire audience.


Secondary Research

Secondary research involves using existing studies, reports, or industry publications to gain insights into audience trends. This can include industry reports on media consumption or demographic studies that provide context on broader habits within your target group. Secondary research is cost-effective and often saves time, allowing you to build on established findings from reputable sources. However, this research may not be specific to your unique audience, and findings are often generalized, which limits their direct applicability. Secondary data can be a helpful supplement to primary research but shouldn’t be the sole basis for segmentation decisions.


Build Audience Personas


Creating personas—fictional profiles representing different segments of your audience—transforms data into relatable characters that bring your insights to life. Personas make it easier to empathize with your audience and guide content creation by providing a clear picture of who you’re speaking to in each segment. By developing detailed personas, you can tailor messages that feel more personal and relevant, leading to stronger engagement and impact.

To build effective personas, consider including these key components:


  • Name and Demographics

    Giving each persona a name and relevant demographic details (such as age, gender, and location) makes them feel real and memorable, helping your team envision this “person” as they develop content.


  • Background and Occupation

    A persona’s background and career provide context for their daily life, responsibilities, and routines, which can inform what kind of content fits into their world. For instance, a busy professional may prefer quick, actionable insights, while a student may be open to deeper, exploratory content.


  • Goals and Motivations

    Defining each persona’s goals and motivations clarifies what they’re hoping to gain from your content. Whether they’re looking to learn, solve a problem, or stay informed, understanding these drivers can help you align your messaging with what truly matters to them.


  • Challenges and Pain Points

    Identify the specific obstacles or frustrations that each persona faces, particularly those that your content can address. Knowing what challenges they encounter enables you to position your content as a helpful, relevant solution.


  • Preferred Channels

    Determine which channels each persona uses to gather information. Are they active on social media, avid email subscribers, or more inclined toward webinars? This helps you reach them in the spaces they already frequent.


  • Content Preferences

    Consider what types of content each persona enjoys or finds valuable, whether it’s short videos, in-depth articles, interactive quizzes, or infographics. This insight helps ensure your format aligns with their preferences, increasing the likelihood of engagement.


Creating a Persona


Building a persona involves detailing the characteristics, needs, and preferences of a representative audience segment. Here’s an example of a persona to illustrate:


Example Persona: “Mr. Carlos”


  • Age: 35

  • Occupation: Middle school science teacher (6th-8th grade)

  • Location: Suburban area


Goals: Mr. Carlos wants to stay informed on the latest scientific discoveries and find engaging, age-appropriate content for his classroom.


Challenges: With limited time, Mr. Carlos can't sit to sift through dense scientific literature. He needs material that’s both accurate and easily understandable for his young students.


Preferred Channels: Mr. Carlos often turns to educational blogs, podcasts, and LinkedIn for quick updates and resources.


Content Preferences: He gravitates toward short articles, infographics, and videos that include practical demonstrations he can use as teaching aids.


By understanding Mr. Carlos’s unique needs and preferences, you can create content that helps him stay current with science and bring relevant, accessible materials into his classroom.


Applying Audience Segmentation and Personas to Science Storytelling

Now that you've segmented your audience and developed personas, how do you put this into action?


Case Study: Health Messaging for Urban and Rural Communities


Scenario

Tailoring public health messages to fit the unique characteristics of each community is essential for effective communication. In this case study, we explore how a health communicator could approach promoting vaccination awareness in two different settings: an urban neighborhood with high smartphone use and a rural area with limited internet access. By creating specific audience profiles and adapting strategies to match each group’s media habits, communicators can increase the reach and relevance of health information.


Approach

  1. Urban Community:

    Persona “Tech-Savvy Tara”: In an urban neighborhood with high smartphone use, Tech-Savvy Tara represents a 30-year-old who is active on Instagram and Facebook. She prefers quick, visually engaging content that she can view on the go.


Strategy: The communicator could create a series of visually appealing infographics and short, swipeable Instagram stories that break down key information about vaccination in a friendly, easy-to-understand format. These stories can be shared over several days, each focusing on a different vaccination benefit or addressing common questions. Collaborating with local influencers or health professionals to share these posts can expand reach within Tara’s network and lend credibility. Additionally, targeted carousel ads on social media featuring bite-sized facts and call-to-action buttons (like “Learn More” or “Find a Clinic”) allow Tara to access more information with minimal effort.


  1. Rural Community:

    Persona “Community-Focused Frank”: In a rural area with limited internet access, a persona like Community-Focused Frank—a 50-year-old who listens to local radio and reads community newspapers—represents a group that values direct, community-based communication.


Strategy: In this case, the communicator could partner with local radio stations to broadcast segments that explain vaccination benefits, making information accessible through a familiar and trusted medium. Printed brochures at community centers, churches, and libraries provide an easy-to-access resource for those who rely on traditional media. Hosting town hall meetings allows for face-to-face discussions, where Frank and his neighbors can raise questions and receive answers directly, which helps clarify information and address concerns.


Reference: "Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda" by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.


Best Practices for Audience Segmentation in Science Communication


To make the most of your audience segmentation, consider these key practices to keep your approach relevant, respectful, and effective:


  • Regularly Update Personas

    Audiences evolve over time as societal trends, technology, and interests change. To keep your personas accurate, set a schedule to review and update them—perhaps every six months or following major events that could impact behavior, like a global pandemic. Regular updates help ensure your messaging remains relevant and aligned with current audience needs.


  • Avoid Stereotyping

    Effective segmentation is rooted in real data, not assumptions. Overgeneralizing can lead to messaging that feels impersonal or, worse, offensive. Avoid stereotypes by basing your personas on research and data, and stay open to new information that challenges or refines your initial understanding.


  • Engage with Your Audience

    Direct interaction with your audience gives you insights that data alone may not reveal. Encourage engagement by inviting comments, running polls, and asking open-ended questions on your platforms. For example, try posting, “What topics are you most interested in learning about this month?” to identify emerging interests and adapt your content accordingly.


  • Test and Refine Your Approach

    Not every strategy will work perfectly on the first try. Testing allows you to see what resonates best and make improvements. Use A/B testing to experiment with different content formats, headlines, and platforms, gathering data on what performs well and adjusting your approach based on these results.


  • Be Culturally Sensitive

    Cultural awareness is essential for inclusive and respectful communication. Being mindful of cultural nuances helps prevent misunderstandings and strengthens audience trust. Conduct research on cultural norms and, if possible, consult with community members to ensure your messages are respectful and relevant to all segments of your audience.


Tools for Effective Audience Segmentation


To streamline your segmentation efforts and gather valuable insights, a range of tools can support each stage of the process:


  • Analytics Platforms

    Analytics tools provide essential data on audience behavior, preferences, and engagement patterns.

    • Google Analytics: A robust tool for tracking website traffic, audience demographics, and user behavior, helping you understand which content resonates most.

    • Social Media Insights: Built-in analytics on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow you to monitor engagement metrics, audience demographics, and content performance, providing insight into what types of posts attract the most interest.


  • Survey Tools

    Surveys are a direct way to learn about your audience’s preferences, needs, and opinions.

    • SurveyMonkey and Google Forms: These user-friendly tools enable you to design, distribute, and analyze surveys, offering a quick and affordable way to gather feedback.


  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems

    CRMs allow you to track audience interactions over time, helping you build detailed profiles and segment lists based on engagement history.

    • HubSpot and Mailchimp: Both platforms offer tools to manage and segment contacts, allowing for personalized communication and targeted email campaigns that align with each segment’s needs.


  • Audience Research Reports

    Accessing reports from credible organizations can provide background on broader trends within your field, adding context to your own data.

    • Examples: Industry reports on media consumption, health trends, or technology adoption can enhance your understanding of audience habits and preferences and help validate your approach.


Audience Segmentation as a Key to Better Science Communication


Bringing science from the lab to the living room is about more than just sharing information—it's about making connections. By taking the time to understand who your audience is through segmentation and persona development, you can create messages that resonate. Remember, effective communication isn't just about what you say, but how you say it and to whom. When you tailor your message thoughtfully, you open the door to greater engagement and impact. So, start mapping out your audience, create those personas, and watch your science stories come to life.



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