How to Choose a Priority Segment for Environmental Outreach
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 5:25PM The TARPARE model for prioritizing segments of your target audience has been widely used in the field of health social marketing for some time (Donovan, 1999). While the criteria for environmental outreach is slightly different, the principle is the same. Essentially, you want to find a segment of your audience that is the best use of limited resources and will help you to influence other segments. This allows you to direct your resources towards the people what will give you the best return on your investment. For environmental outreach, let’s use the acronym TIPAR.
|
Initial |
Criteria |
Description |
|
T |
Total number of people in the segment |
Segments encompassing larger groups of individuals are more attractive. |
|
I |
Influence |
Segments that have influence upon other segments should be given priority since they are social leaders. |
|
P |
Persuadable |
A segment that is easily persuadable to change should be given a higher priority as it will take fewer resources to establish the behaviour change. |
|
A |
Accessible |
Segments that are easier to reach are more attractive as less work and fewer resources will be needed to make an impact. |
|
R |
Resources required |
The fewer resources required to meet the needs of the segment, the greater the expected return on investment. |
Apply the TARPARE model to your segment. Give each segment a score between 1 and 10 for each TARPARE criteria. Add up your scores to see the rank of your audience segments.
Example:
Environmental Problem: Over Fishing
|
Segment |
T |
I |
P |
A |
R |
Total |
|
Resident Anglers |
3 |
1 |
7 |
7 |
6 |
24 |
|
First Nations |
5 |
5 |
3 |
8 |
4 |
25 |
|
Tourist Anglers |
7 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
2 |
17 |
|
Angling Guide Companies |
8 |
2 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
28 |
outreach techniques in
Human Behaviour,
Outreach,
Social Change 
Reader Comments (1)
At first look this seems like a really interesting idea. But how does one come up with the numbers in the boxes for the TIPAR criteria? How, for example, does one decide that resident anglers are 7/10 persuadable, but first nations are 3/10 persuadable? I realize these are probably made-up numbers for this example, but I think it's still a valid question - is this just quantifying our personal biases, when we don't actually know the answers? How could we go about finding the answers? It seems more like what's being recorded is the persuadability etc as perceived by the person/agency filling out the TIPAR sheet.
Curious to know what's your take on it!