Step 1: Tools to Help You Research Your Potential Priority Audience
Stewardship Index Survey Data
The Stewardship Index Survey Data can help you look at many different subgroups within the general population to help you assess opportunity and likelihood within your potential priority audiences. This large dataset will enable you to segment the data by many factors to focus on your audience of greatest interest. In some cases, the survey data may not be robust enough to give you reliable information about your priority audiences. There may not be a large enough sample size of your audiences within your geography to provide statistically significant information. The data interface will give you a data confidence score, and if it is low, you can change your selection criteria to increase the sample size and the confidence in the data. In this case, for the greatest confidence in your own community’s data, you will need to create and field your own survey to measure the opportunity, likelihood and size of audience segments. It is possible to field one survey that both prioritizes an audience and measures the behavior baseline. To do this, you would measure the general population, and include demographic and sociographic questions so that you can segment your results by several different audience groups. Be sure to include "likelihood" questions so that you can compare your audience groups by both their opportunity and likelihood.
US Census Dataset
The US Census dataset is publicly available and can help you assess the size of many different audience segments within your community.
The ideal priority audience is one that is (relatively) large, is not already engaging in the behavior you want them to adopt, and is likely or willing to adopt it. You may also want to consider your ability to reach your audience efficiently. For example, audiences with an established communication channel, such as an HOA listserv or a meeting schedule such as a trade organization, may be reached very efficiently. The Anne Arundel County Watershed Stewards Academy has developed a helpful campaign builder worksheet.