Many target audiences possess unique expectations and characteristics and sources of information. As a communications professional, you must be aware of them in order to reach the desired audience.

For instance, in many large metro areas numerous ethnic groups have their own newspapers, radio stations and television channels. This is good for a communications professional because when you need to reach a certain group, you can utilize an established channel that already exists.

I once worked at a hospital in Los Angeles that had a program where heart surgeons perform life saving heart surgery pro bono on poor children from foreign countries where this type of medical care doesn’t exist. The program relies on donations to pay for the plane fare for the children and their parents and their housing while in the United States.

My role was to raise awareness of the program to support the fund raising efforts.

The lead heart surgeon in this program was a Japanese American. The children came from Armenia, Poland, Korea, South America and many other nations. Whenever we had a child fly in from a foreign country, I would contact the media in Los Angeles that communicates with the people of that same nationality.

For instance, when we had an Armenian child, we would target the Armenian media, telling them about the case and the good work we were doing. When we had a child come in from South America, we would target the Hispanic media. We were also able to get publicity in the Japanese media because of the Japanese surgeon.

All of this positive communication resulted in large amounts of donations generated from these different ethnic groups.