Using Your Population Profile Report Plus

A PPR+ is a really valuable source of insight into an area: with all the information of a standard Population Profile Report (including summary tables and maps, showing drive time or however you’ve defined the overall area), in addition to the detailed breakdowns for each ward. 

It's provided in a PDF summary and an Excel sheet (to allow you to access the full data and to manipulate it more easily).

The following are some ways in which you could use your PPR+ for strategic planning, or tactical implementation:

What: An understanding of the overall demographics and Audience Spectrum profile of your area.

Why: To know who lives locally, to think about what their needs might be and how your area differs from the wider picture (and therefore what needs might be greater or lesser than elsewhere).

How: Looking at the summary overview, including indices comparing your area to the base (e.g. regional or national comparator). Look at which groups are large or small in terms of percentages and absolute numbers, as well as which are above or below the base (whether the index is above or below 100).

What: An understanding of how your audience compares to the overall population of your area.

Why: To know who you are reaching (and not reaching) locally; to understand how representative your audience is of the population; to identify who you are currently appealing to and for which potential audiences you might need to do something different.

How: Compare the Audience Spectrum profile and demographic data of your own audiences to the data in the population profile report (we can help you collect this audience data if you don't have it, please get in touch). 

What: Identify where your target audiences live - eg a particular age group, or Audience Spectrum segment.

Why: Get a better return on your marketing activity by targeting the right areas (eg. with out-of-home media campaigns or geo-targeted digital advertising.) 

How: In the Excel version of the PPR+, sort the relevant column ‘high to low’ (or ‘low to high’) on either the ‘percentage’ or ‘number’ tab. Look at which wards come to the top of the list. 

What: Understand more about the wards you have lower engagement in. 

Why: Learn how areas you want to extend your reach into may differ from those you currently engage.

How: From your own audience data, work out which wards you have most and least audiences from.  Then transfer these to the Excel version of the PPR+, as an extra column against each sector. Look at the demographics and Audience Spectrum profiles of those wards.

Our Audience Spectrum motivation guides could help get you started thinking about engagement tactics for less-familiar segments.

What: Add information from other sources to the PPR+.

Why: There may be other information you’d like to compare, or to give a more detailed picture of your area.

How: Add the external data to the PPR+ as additional columns. Try to get data from the same time period as the existing data in the PPR+ where possible and be careful about the differences between the number of individuals and households, and whether there are particular age groups excluded from the data you’re appending (e.g. children).

If you have any questions or would like to share ways in which you’ve found your report, or suggestions for improvements, please get in touch.