While audience analysis does not guarantee against errors in judgment, it will help you make good choices in topic, language, and style of presentation, written or oral. The more you know about your audience, the better you can serve their interests and needs. There are certainly limits to what we can learn through information collection, and we need to acknowledge that before making assumptions, but knowing how to gather and use information through audience analysis is an essential skill for successful business communicators.
Commercials cater to different demographics or “target audiences” and you should think about this the same way. Not every demographic you can think of is going to be important in planning a written communication or oral presentation. Think of this as more of an awareness. Ask yourself, “Might any of these characteristics impact how my message is received?”
Demographic information includes factors such as gender, age range, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, level of education, religion, occupational field, and group membership. Group membership could be of an organization, club, political party, or group of tennis players, etc. You may gather information from what you know or seek insights from someone knowledgeable about the group. In some instances, you may even have the opportunity to observe, interview, or survey your audience.
While we consider elements of demographic audience analysis, we also must be aware of stereotyping. Stereotyping is creating an oversimplified image of a particular group of people, usually by assuming that all members of the group are alike. We can look at ways to cater to an audience but try not to oversimplify.
In the previous chapter, we discussed your attitudes, values, and beliefs based on your knowledge and experiences. Your audience will have them as well! While demographic information is fairly straightforward and verifiable, psychographic information is much less clear-cut. Two different people who both say they believe in equal educational opportunity may have very different interpretations of what “equal opportunity” means. People who say they don’t buy junk food may have very different standards for what specific kinds of foods are considered “junk food.”
It's important to note that people inherit some values from their family upbringing, cultural influences, and life experiences. The extent to which someone values family loyalty and obedience to parents, thrift, humility, and work may be determined by these influences more than by individual choice. Psychographic analysis can reveal preexisting notions that limit your audience’s frame of reference. By knowing about such notions ahead of time, you can address them. Audiences are likely to have two basic kinds of preexisting notions: those about the topic and those about the source/speaker.
Topic: It’s important to know your audience to make a rational judgment about how their views of your topic might be shaped. In speaking to an audience that might have differing definitions, you should take care to define your terms in a clear, honest way. At the opposite end of oversimplification is the level of sophistication your audience might embody. When you speak to a cognitively complex audience, your strategy must be different from one you would use for an audience that is less educated in the topic. With a cognitively complex audience, you must acknowledge the overall complexity while stating that your focus will be on only one dimension. With an audience that’s uninformed about your topic, that strategy in a persuasive speech could confuse them; they might well prefer a black-and-white message with no gray areas. You must decide whether it is ethical to represent your topic this way.
Source/speaker: People form opinions readily. For instance, students form impressions of teachers the moment they walk into our classrooms on the first day. Students get an immediate impression of age, competence, and attitude simply from appearance and nonverbal behavior. In addition, many students have heard other students’ opinions. The same is almost certainly true of you. But it’s not always easy to get others to be honest about their impressions of you. They’re likely to tell you what they think you want to hear. Sometimes, however, you do know what others think. Based on these impressions, your audience might expect a boring speech, a shallow speech, a sermon, and so on. However, your concern should still be serving your audience’s needs and interests, not debunking their opinions of you or managing your image.
The next type of analysis is called the situational audience analysis because it focuses on characteristics related to the specific speaking situation. The situational audience analysis can be divided into three main areas for a presentation: size of the audience, physical setting for the presentation, and time.
Size: A small audience may give you the latitude to be relatively informal within the bounds of good judgment. It isn’t too difficult to let each audience member feel as though you’re speaking to them. However, you would not become so informal that you allow your carefully prepared speech to lapse into shallow entertainment. With larger audiences, it’s more difficult to reach out to each listener, and your speech will tend to be more formal, staying more strictly within its careful outline. You will have to work harder to prepare visual and audio material that reaches the people sitting at the back of the room, including possibly using amplification.
Setting: The physical setting can make or break even the best presentations, so it is important to exercise as much control as you can over it. It is a good idea to visit the location ahead of time if possible and make note of any factors that will affect how you present. In any case, be sure to arrive well in advance of your speaking time so that you will have time to check that the microphone works, test out any technology, and request any needed adjustments in lighting, room ventilation, or other factors to eliminate distractions and make your audience more comfortable.
Time: What time is the presentation taking place? Will this affect how engaged your audience is with your message? What is the length of the presentation? This is important for capturing and keeping attention, but also for meeting expectations and determining your reliability. Hitting your target lengths for written or verbal communication is extremely important.
The above elements of situation analysis are described in the context of a live presentation but can also be applied to both virtual presentations and written communications. The size of the audience may need to be taken into consideration when choosing a method of delivery. The setting that the audience will be in when they receive the virtual presentation or written communication and the time when they receive the message are critical to the success of your message coming across as closely as you intend for it to.
The key is to use this information to adapt your presentation to your audience by considering how they are likely to respond and adjusting how and what you say to be as clear and/or convincing for them as you can. Put yourself in their shoes with the information you have gathered. Anticipate questions and objections, and plan accordingly to consider them in your presentation. You can do this in the preparation stages, but you may also have to adapt to the audience’s feedback throughout the presentation if the setting allows for it.
Attribution:
Information for this section was modified from
Stand up, Speak out Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
References:
Lucas, S. E. (2007). The art of public speaking. Mcgraw-Hill.