Target Audience

It is necessary for a magazine to have a target audience in mind when producing a magazine for it to be successful. This is so that they know how to specifically aim their magazine at a certain audience, know what they want and sell lots of the magazine. Other than sex and age, another important thing to consider when choosing a target audience for a magazine is socio-economic classification which is a common way of measuring social class according to the job of the main bread winner of a household. These are set out in categories of different jobs: A, B, C1, C2, D & E.

A - high ranking professionals; lawyers, doctors etc
B - middle ranking professional; middle managers in businesses, teachers etc
C1 - “white-collar” (office) workers; junior managers, office clerks, bank clerks, nurses etc
C2 - skilled manual workers; carpenters, electricians etc
D - semi and unskilled manual workers; drivers, post sorters, labourers etc
E - people subsisting on state benefits; the unemployed, pensioners etc

I took a print screen from the National Readership Survey website (www.nrs.co.uk) which gives statistics about which people read "Q" and "Mojo" magazine. This information tells me that the main audience that buy "Q" magazine are mostly men, around 85% of the readers are aged 15-44 and two thirds of the readers are in the ABC1 category. I can also tell from these statistics that the main audience that buy "mojo" are very similar as that of "Q", though "Mojo" has a smaller amount of readers and the amount is different, the trends are the same.

From the Bauer website (http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/Brands/Q/Audience Profile) I found a small section describing the psychographics/Audience Profile for readers of Q Magazine. The readers of Q Magazine are "Open minded experience seekers, the Q audience don’t define themselves by the music they listen to. Music is an important passion, but their love of music will never be to the detriment of their other passions, such as film, sport and comedy."

From this I know I should target my magazine at mostly men aged 15-44 in the socio economic category ABC1.