Jettison the Term Audience
Any way you cut it, the word ‘audience’ is passe. It is simply time to ‘red flag’ the term especially in media, events, and by extension of both, in community-based businesses.
I was exchanging emails with a colleague this week and he said using the term B2B (in a media context) was dated. He posits that younger execs look at the world in terms of business models — media, events, data, research, software, and services. Yet the word audience still lingers in an equally old-fashioned way. We hear it everywhere.
Just look at the definition:
1. …’ the assembled spectators or listeners at a public event, such as a play, movie, concert, or meeting.” Related: …the people who watch or listen to TV or radio…the readership of a book, magazine, or newspaper
2. A formal interview with a person in authority
3. A formal hearing (although Google rightfully suggested this was ‘archaic.’)
I could stop right now, right here, and rest my case. I won’t.
Synonyms for the word audience are even worse: onlooker, viewer, spectator, listener, patron.
Referring to our bread and butter this way is a big problem. Without so-called audiences many industry business models break. Moons ago I blogged about Lil Nas X and Why Events Will Never Be the Same. Recently we shared with clients our analysis of G2 and the way they are harnessing reviews and going deep in their vertical as a respected source. We blogged about this as well.
Next week we are publishing research that tells us GenZ attended just under four conferences in 2025 and expect to do about the same this year. They repeat less than half of them. That is a lot of seats to (re)fill. As AI guts ‘visitors’ to our websites where are our Lil Nas X, or G2, or Reddit-like experiences?
B2B is just so serious and boring. But why? Engaged users, members, communities are far better than the passive — sit back and relax ‘audience’ we host and which sends the wrong message. Just this recently:
- And event offering little Q&A or ability to interact with speakers. Gen Z tells us they come to network and build industry knowledge. How does flying across the country and asking them to sit in an ‘audience’ and do what they can do staying home, watching a screen actually benefit them? Being in “an audience” in this day and age, passively watching a stage? So yesterday.
- I hear clients talk about their ‘members’ and then internally use the word AUDIENCE everywhere including the outdated audience development lead/staff/department.
We don’t develop audiences anymore. We engage them. We invite and encourage them to participate with us, with our site, and especially with one another. These are companies that call their ‘members’ audience internally and then don’t let them interact with one another externally. How community-oriented is that?
Users, members, communities today expect to interact, vote, weigh-in, review products, ask questions, post comments, and support one another.
We just need to get out of their way and quit treating them like passive pawns in some we’ll do-things-to-you while faking we are doing-it-for-you under the auspices of modern-day digital marketing.
In a sense I’m glad the digital marketing funnels of yesterday are collapsing along with the SDR role that farther up the funnel was SaaD anyway. They have been broken from the beginning and frankly do little to serve users in authentic and meaningful ways.
We need to help buyers buy. We need to help them learn. We need to help them meet people. How about encouraging that and letting go of the terms that hold us back. Part of why G2 works so well is because they provide trusted reviews and comparisons from the community while also helping buyers compare and buy. They are also vertically focused.
Why not more like that? Why not let our so called ‘members’ engage with one another to problem-solve a la Sermo of yesteryear, or GlobalSpec before that, or Reddit today?
Working with scientists and engineers years ago I saw how significant their need was to collaborate and problem-solve. It still remains.
In one company, we had a 3000-strong expert network that facilitated answers to thorny technical questions. The expert on submarine seals helped the heart-valve engineer figure out how to make seals hold in saline environments. They’d never have met otherwise! Another expert far away from consumer goods, helped the snow-globe maker figure out how to keep the snow from turning yellow in its fluid-filled plastic dome.
That’s engagement.
We can enable problem-solving, product comparisons, and even do what I have called help with the ‘find my’ need buyers have. Where is the actual place that gives buyers, the ability to identify their specific need and encourages suppliers to participate with legitimate solutions.
Yes, there is the serendipity of learning about something we didn’t know we need and actually do. But a lot of what we need to purchase we know we need and we can’t easily find the options and compare them.
We miss the opinions, the authoritative voices including from our peers that actually help us find what we are looking for. More Reddit-like threads please. More data we can search to get great comparisons. More users sharing with one another the comparisons they’ve done.
We are too busy splicing people into buckets that no longer work (audiences and sponsors) and holding back the alchemy that creates loyal committed engaged members in our so-called modern-day communities. It’s time to let go.