How to Explain Secondary Audiences to Anyone
When I was a kid in the 1990s, I desperately wanted an Easy Bake Oven. Every time a commercial for the mini baking toy flashed across the TV screen, I was mesmerized. Smiling children whipped up tiny cakes and cookies, as an announcer enthusiastically highlighted all the delicious treats that were possible with the oven. To my 8-year-old self, it seemed like a dream come true.
What I didn‘t realize at the time was that I wasn‘t actually the target customer for those Easy Bake Oven ads. Sure, the commercials featured kids my age having a blast with the toy. But the real audience – the primary audience – was the parents and adults who would ultimately make the decision to purchase an Easy Bake Oven. As a child with no money or credit card, I had zero buying power. I was what‘s known as the secondary audience.
Understanding the distinction between primary and secondary audiences is crucial for effective marketing. While primary audiences have the means and authority to make a purchase, secondary audiences wield significant influence over those decisions. Dismissing or ignoring secondary audiences means missing out on important opportunities to boost sales, build brand awareness, and establish long-term customer loyalty.
What is a Secondary Audience?
In basic terms, a secondary audience is a group of people who are not the main target of a marketing campaign, but still hold sway over the success of the campaign. While a primary audience has the buying power to make a purchase, a secondary audience has the power to influence that decision.
Think back to the Easy Bake Oven example. The primary audience was parents, grandparents, and other adults looking to buy gifts for the children in their lives. The secondary audience was the kids themselves. While not directly making the purchase, the desires and interests of the secondary audience played a huge role. After all, no adult wants to buy a toy the child won‘t play with or enjoy.
Marketing to secondary audiences works because it taps into the network effect. When a secondary audience is persuaded about the benefits or appeal of a product, they spread the message to the primary audience. A child begging for a toy increases the likelihood a parent will buy it. An employee raving about new software makes a boss more likely to approve the purchase. Buzz generated by a secondary audience expands overall reach and interest.
Examples of Secondary Audiences
Once you understand what a secondary audience is, you‘ll start to notice them everywhere. Some common examples include:
• Holiday gift-giving: Gift buyers are the primary audience, while gift recipients are the secondary audience. Effective holiday marketing caters to both, positioning products as thoughtful presents.
• Children‘s products: Whether it‘s toys, clothes, or food, kids‘ products often market to both children (secondary audience) and the parents/adults who buy for them (primary audience). The goal is to capture a child‘s interest and a parent‘s trust.
• B2B software: While the executive decision maker is the primary audience for B2B solutions, end users like employees are an important secondary audience. Getting employee buy-in makes it easier to persuade executives.
• Pet products: Pet owners are the primary audience, but marketing often features cute animals (the secondary audience) to grab attention and form emotional connections.
• Household products: Cleaning supplies, kitchen gadgets, and other household products often feature a main user (usually a woman) who makes product requests to the purchaser (their spouse/partner). Marketing highlights ease of use for the secondary audience to encourage primary audience purchases.
• Pharmaceuticals: Drug marketing targets doctors (the primary audience) who write prescriptions, and patients (secondary audience) who may request certain medications. DTC drug ads are designed to prompt patients to "ask your doctor" to generate prescriptions.
The list could go on and on. In each case, marketers who make an effort to understand and persuade secondary audiences see a significant lift in results. According to Harvard Business Review, campaigns aimed at both primary and secondary participants resulted in 35-45% higher conversion rates in industries like auto insurance.1 Clearly, the secondary audience matters.
How to Market to Secondary Audiences
Fully leveraging secondary audiences starts with doing your homework. Marketers need to look beyond surface demographics to really understand how a secondary audience thinks, what they value, and what resonates with them. User research like surveys, interviews, and focus groups can help get inside the heads of secondary audiences.
Once you know what makes a secondary audience tick, personalize messaging accordingly. Back to the Easy Bake Oven, an effective ad aimed at parents would focus on safety, while one for kids would emphasize fun. In the holiday gift-giving example, secondary audience marketing would revolve around the appeal of receiving the item, while primary audience messaging would play up giftability. Segmentation allows you to speak directly to secondary audience needs and pain points.
Of course, you don‘t want to focus so much on the secondary audience that you neglect the primary audience. The most persuasive campaigns highlight benefits for both. A kids‘ toy ad might include a mention of an educational element to satisfy parents. B2B software marketing could demonstrate productivity features for end users and ROI for decision makers. Connect the dots between what matters to each audience.
Finally, empower your secondary audience to advocate on your behalf. Encourage satisfied end users to leave reviews and spread the word to decision makers. Give kids the language to tell parents why they need a toy. Equip gift recipients to rave about your products. Advocacy from a secondary audience is marketing gold.
Secondary Audiences Drive Marketing Success
When you get secondary audience marketing right, the impact on overall marketing success is profound. A secondary audience excited about your offering will go to bat for it with the primary audience. They‘ll bring it up in conversation, send links, leave hints – all the organic, word-of-mouth promotion that marketers dream about.
Beyond driving short-term conversions, secondary audience marketing also sets the stage for long-term success. When you demonstrate that you understand and care about end users, you build brand affinity and loyalty that lasts. Even if the primary audience doesn‘t bite right away, a positive secondary audience impression increases the chances they‘ll convert down the line, or will be more receptive to future offers. It‘s an important part of playing the long game.
So next time you‘re developing a marketing strategy, don‘t sleep on the secondary audience. Taking the time to identify who influences your primary audience, and tailoring efforts to win them over, pays dividends many times over. The secondary audience may not be the one handing over their credit card, but they hold the keys to the primary audience‘s wallet. And that‘s an incredibly powerful position for marketers who can earn their loyalty and trust.
Conclusion
Understanding secondary audiences is a critical component of any smart, holistic marketing strategy. No primary audience exists in a vacuum – there are always end users, partners, and other stakeholders who help shape their opinions and decisions. Savvy marketers know that persuading a secondary audience is a highly effective "back door" to winning over a primary audience.
Remember the lesson of the Easy Bake Oven. I may not have been the one buying it, but by appealing to me, those ads set in motion a chain of events (some might call it begging) that led to a sale. I got my prized toy, and the company got a happy customer – all thanks to secondary audience marketing.
So don‘t let secondary audiences be an afterthought. They may just be the key to taking your marketing from good to great.
1 Kumar, V. & Srinivasan, S. (2022). To Get More from Your Data, Engage the Entire Organization. Harvard Business Review.
