How Well Do you Know your Audience

How Well Do You Know Your Audience? The audience is the most important factor in any speech, pitch or presentation; more important than the content and certainly more important than you as the speaker. The reason? If you don’t know who your audience is you won’t be able to craft content that will meet their needs or effectively deliver it to them. Before you do any preparation, here are some crucial questions to ask about your audience: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • How many people will be there? Who are they? What is their age, ethnicity, race, culture, gender, religion, primary language, educational level, profession? What do they believe? What are their interests? What other relevant qualities such as business leaders, stay at home mums, fitness fanatics, gadget lovers, etc? Are you similar to your audience, or different and how will that affect your approach? Why are they attending the presentation? Do they know why they are attending the presentation? Is their attendance voluntary or mandatory? What are they expecting to hear? How do they feel about what they are expecting to hear? What role or position do audience members hold? What is their level of knowledge about the topic? Do some of your audience know more about the topic than you do? What do they know and what do they need to know? Do they know the jargon / technical terms you may use? Is the audience familiar with you and your role? Do they know why you are presenting to them? What assumptions are you making about your audience? What is the style of event? What will they be wearing? What has gone on before (immediately or in the days/weeks prior?) and what will follow your presentation? What is the main purpose of your presentation? What do you want your audience to think, feel or do as a result of this presentation? If you are preparing a proposal, you might like to work through your audience profile using the following questions: • • • • • • • • • Who is the decision maker or decision makers? How much does the decision maker(s) know about the situation? How does the decision maker(s) view the situation? How will the decision maker(s) react to the proposal? Who else will attend the presentation? What are their views on the presentation or proposal? Who else will be affected by this presentation? What's the next step? What is my revised objective or fallback position? When preparing a presentation, to really understand your audience it is a valuable exercise to first speak with two or three people who will be attending; not only will you better understand them but you’ll already be developing a relationship with them which will make it easier to connect when you’re giving your presentation. The types of questions you may ask them could include: • • • • • • What is your typical day like? What makes a good/bad day? What are the problems in your office? (you would tailor this question depending on what you have been asked to speak about e.g. if you have been asked to speak about employee engagement, you might ask what specifically is contributing to lack of engagement) What solutions have been tried to address the problem (your topic) and what was the outcome? Is there an elephant in the room i.e. is there something that everyone is thinking or saying out of earshot of management? If you could change one thing about your company, what would you change? Finally, consider environmental factors such as: • How will the presenting space be set up? • Where will the audience be located in relation to the presenting area? • What obstacles or distractions might be in the room, or outside of it? • What equipment will be available i.e. audio visual, flip chart, microphone, etc? • What time of the day will the presentation take place? By answering these questions you will be able to develop your material around what the audience needs to hear, rather than what you want to tell them. This shows that you are interested in the audience enough to create content that is relevant and interesting to them; therefore, setting yourself up for success in the delivery.