Module 3.2 – Analyze Your Audience

 

Module 2 – Introduction

            The better you know and understand your audience, the people you will be dealing with, the better your chances are of having a successful project/programme purpose relationship with them. Doing some homework, some basic research, before you actually meet them saves time, and puts you at a distinct advantage.

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1. Analyze Your Audience

            What do you know about the people you will be meeting, addressing, selling to, providing a service for, or working with?

            The better you get to know and understand them, and the interests they represent, even before meeting them, the better your chances are of having a successful project/programme purpose relationship with them.

            The first thing to remember, however, is that as human beings they are as complex as you are. We all have our careers as well as separate lives away from work. We all have personal histories, families, hobbies, hang-ups, some successes and some failures, outside interests, and involvements. They do, too.

            So what you should really be asking is who they are—or could they become—in terms of a project/programme purpose relationship with you and your organization, and its services or products.

             There are numerous ways to find this out ranging from surveys and formal research to talking to people who already know or do project/programme purpose with them. While there are a variety of ways to do this, the first question is to determine why you need the information. The answer to that will guide you into the proper way to get the information you need.

            Public speakers, for example, need different information about their audiences than a sales team would need before going in to make a product demonstration. We will look at several ways to analyze different audiences.

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2. What Do You Need To Know?

            What does your audience really know, or think they know, about the subject?

            One way to find that out is to simply ask them, and hope that they will tell you the truth. At times, however, people would rather be ignorant than appear ignorant. They don’t want anyone to know that they don’t know. In other cases, they think they know more than they actually do, or that they know less than they actually do.

            One way around this problem is to look at your audience as a group. If you are being brought in to speak to them, the people arranging it can usually give you the information you want.

            At times, they will just give you the information, but at other times, you’ll have to ferret some or all of it out for yourself.

  • Who are they? Their titles, jobs, specialties, and fields of expertise. This is the one piece of information you should always have in advance, no matter what you have to do to get it. This tells you to whom you will be talking. It will provide the basis and frame of reference for much of your presentation.
  • What do they know? Are they all college educated? If so, in what areas? Are they technical graduates? If neither, what is their level of education? You don’t want to talk down to anyone. Instead, you want to talk at their level. To do that, you need to know what that level is.

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3. What Do You Need To Know? (Continued)

  • What are their backgrounds? How did they get to where they are today? Are they all relatively new to the sector of activity? To the organization? Did most of them work their way up the ranks?
  • How old are they? Another way to ask this is: How long have they been doing their jobs, or been with the organization?
  • What do they have in common? In other words, why are they all going to be there? Are they all veterans? Vegetarians? Music lovers?
  • What are their differences? If this is not a homogenous group—all accountants, guitarists, physicists, or electrical engineers, for example—what are the various areas and specialties represented? You will have to be able to talk to all of them, so what you are looking for are the common denominators, the things they can all understand and relate to.
  • What are their primary interests? Is your presentation the main reason they are there? Or, is it one of several reasons?
  • What are they expecting? They entered the room with some sort of expectations. You need to find out what they are so that you can either meet those expectations, or inform them that you will not meet them because you are there to do something else.
  • How prepared will they be? How much prior knowledge will they already have when you show up?

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4. What Do You Need To Know? (Continued)

            Once you know who your audience is, compare their anticipated level of knowledge to your own. What do you know? What knowledge, information, or attitudes do you share with your audience? Where do your knowledge and views, and your audience’s knowledge and views, diverge?

            To get this, you will very likely have to do some research, some digging.

            You will want to know as much about them as possible. While much of this information could be expected from the person setting up the presentation, you might also have to talk to others who have dealt with them, or even look for stories about them and their organization in back issues of the local newspaper.

            Past information—history—shapes current perception. That perception must be taken into account when shaping a message designed to either reinforce or dispel the ideas or attitudes people already have.

            For all practical purposes, when it comes to what others think about things, about us and about what we do, about everything for that matter, perception is reality—even when the perception is wrong.

            We cannot change their reality, until we change their perception.

            We cannot do that, however, until we actually know how others perceive the person, place, or thing—the issue, product, or service—that we are communicating about.

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5. Audience Breakdown

            Whether you are making a speech to an arena or convention center filled with thousands of people, a presentation in a small conference room, or a sales call in a potential action sponsor/beneficiary’s office, your audience will usually consist of a number of different kinds of people.

            It is much easier to prepare a speech or presentation to a group that shares the same level of interest or knowledge about a subject. It’s when you have a mixed audience that problems can develop.

            With a mixed group, each specific sector poses specific problems. One of the most common ones is focusing on just one sector at the expense of the others. If you start talking to one sector about their narrow field of interest or expertise, you could wind up confusing, ignoring, and very possibly alienating all of those in your audience who are not in that sector or share their in-depth interests.

            Some of the sectors you might encounter in an audience include:

·        Experts: People who understand exactly what it is you do—or are offering—and how you do it. They know your subject as well as you do; both the theoretical and practical aspects. There are a number of potential problems with dealing with experts. If you are not an expert yourself, they might lose interest in you and faith in your organization.

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6. Audience Breakdown (Continued)

·        Specialists: They are either theoretical or technical experts in one aspect of the subject but may know little or nothing about the product or service in its entirety. They tend to focus on their areas of expertise and expect you to be as familiar with those areas as they. Like the experts, they can monopolize the meeting by focusing on esoteric details of no interest to anyone else.

·        Technicians: They know how it works, and aren’t really concerned about the theory behind it. They might not even understand all of the theory. But they do know how to use it, and, if it breaks down, fix it. Their questions are very practical. They are usually specific and they generally want and expect specific answers to them.

·        Theoreticians: They understand the theory behind it and why it works, but they are the last people to ask to fix one. In many cases, you don’t even want them operating the equipment.

·        Familiar: These people know what you are talking about in general terms. They may have some understanding of the concept, but not enough to actually use one.

·        Novice: They don’t really understand what it does, how it does it, or even how or why to use it.

·        Decision Makers: These people will make the project/programme purpose decisions, actually deciding if the organization should buy it or, if they are manufacturers, even make it. They are rarely either experts or technicians.

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7. Dealing with a Mixed Audience

            What do you do when you have more than one audience? What do you do when you have to reach experts and novices, theoreticians and technicians, specialists and decision makers… all at the same time? A lot depends on whether you are talking to them, or writing to them. In either case, you have to decide on whom to focus.

            If you are writing a report that all of these different audiences will see, you can do an overall introduction and summary that addresses everything you want to cover in general terms. The report will also include appendices, footnotes, or references to separate special sections for each of your audiences: technical specifications for the technicians and experts, marketing information for the sales staff, financial projections for the decision makers, and so on.

            If you have to do all of this in an oral presentation, you have even more of a problem since you run the risk of confusing some members of the audience, and boring or talking down to others.

            Again, you deliver a general overall introduction and summary that addresses everything you want to cover in general terms. If you have the time, personnel, and space, you can then break the audience down into specialized groups: technicians, marketing, finance, etc. Each group then gets a specialized presentation focusing on their areas of expertise or decision-making. If you cannot do that, you are better off with written reports that will supplement the oral presentation. As you cover a topic in general terms, you tell them where to find the details they might find interesting or helpful in each of their written reports.

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8. Hiring Outside Analysts

            Can you do a good job of getting to know your own beneficiaries? Or, do you need an outside agency to help you get to know them better? There is no one right answer.      The only legitimate answer is: It all depends on your ability to really get to know your beneficiaries. This means gathering information and analyzing it.

            While you very likely have the staff to do it, do they know how? If not, how long would it take to train them to conduct surveys or any other sort of beneficiary analysis? What jobs would go undone in the process? Moreover, would you do it more than once, or at least often enough to make the training worth the time, effort, and money involved?

            Numerous organizations specialize in this sort of task.

            One complaint that many organizations have lodged is that the surveys they contracted for did not really give them information they needed, wanted, or could use. The problem here can usually be traced to a lack of communication between the consulting organization and the one that hired them.

            One of the dangers in using outside consultants is that they may not know your specific project/programme purpose, or even your specific sector of activity. When asked about this problem, most consultants say that they are only as good as the information they are given to work with, and point out that all they can do is try to get their action sponsors/beneficiaries to be open and honest with them while they are designing the survey and survey questions.

            As we said earlier, there is no one right answer to about hiring an outside consulting organization. If you do hire them, however, you have to be willing to be completely honest with them otherwise you are just wasting your money.

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9. beneficiary Analysis

            Although Left Brain Marketing, of Gurnee, Illinois, is a beneficiary analysis and strategic planning agency that focuses on the recreation and durables industries, its advice is valid for most industries. Here’s what they have to say about getting to know your beneficiaries at http://www.leftbraininc.com/.

            The consultants point out that most organizations are already sitting on a potential gold mine of beneficiary information that has been assembled from:

The secret is mining that data by analyzing it properly.

            Here are 10 questions that data you probably already have will very likely be able to answer for you if you take the time to sit down and study it:

  1. Who are your best and worst beneficiaries/beneficiary segments?
  2. What do they have in common?
  3. How can you find more like them?
  4. What is the most efficient media to reach them?
  5. Who is most likely to respond to your product or promotional offer?
  6. What is the best method to motivate them?
  7. Which beneficiaries are most likely to remain beneficiaries?
  8. Which ones are the most likely to turn to someone else?
  9. What other products are they likely to purchase?
  10. Should you primarily focus on acquisition, retention, or maximization strategies to grow your project/programme purpose?

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10. How Well Do You Know the Person Sitting Next to You?

            Quite often your audience is the person sitting on your right side in a meeting, and the one on your left, and across from you, and so on.

            In many ways, it is easier to get enough background information to perform an in-depth audience or beneficiary analysis on strangers than it is on your fellow employees.

            When you do investigate people outside of the organization, that’s called research. But when you do it to people inside the organization, some might call it prying.

            So even though you will need the same information, you’ll have to get it in different ways. Luckily, you normally have time to do it and plenty of resources. Instead of formal survey questions, you have four primary tools:

1.      Observe. Watch the people around you. See how they operate; what they do and do not do, and how they react to new ideas or situations. What are their strengths and weaknesses, their pet peeves, their areas of interest and disinterest?

2.      Read. Have any of them been interviewed by the media, either by the in-house organization media or in local newspapers, or specialized trade or sector of activity journals, magazines, or newsletters?

3.      Talk. What do other people have to say about them?

4.      Get To Know Them. Take the time to get to know them yourself. If it would be appropriate to ask them to have lunch, or get together after work, do so. In addition, remember, in getting to know them, they are also getting to know you.

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Assignments

 

Multiple Choice

 

1.         _______________ must be taken into account when shaping a message designed      to either reinforce or dispel the ideas or attitudes people already have.

a.       Facts

b.      Perception

c.       Cost

d.      All of the above

 

2.         We cannot change people’s __________, until we change their ___________.

a.       Ideas, views

b.      Reality, perception

c.       Perception, reality

d.      None of the above

 

3.         All of the following are tools to get information on your employees except

a.       Observe

b.      Read

c.       Gossip

d.      Talk

 

4.         One of the dangers in using outside consultants is that

a.       They may not know your specific project/programme purpose, or even your sector of activity

b.      They may be working for your competitors

c.       They probably aren’t very honest

d.      None of the above

 


Matching the Columns

 

1.  Experts

A. They are either theoretical or technical experts in one aspect of the subject but may know little or nothing about the product or service in its entirety.

2.  Specialists

B. They understand the theory behind it and why it works, but they are the last people to ask to fix one.

3.  Technicians

C. They don’t really understand what it does, how it does it, or even how or why to use it.

4.  Theoreticians

D. People who understand exactly what it is you do and how you do it.

5.  Novice

E. These people know what you are talking about in general terms.

6.  Familiar

F. They know how it works, and aren’t really concerned about the theory behind it.

 

Answers:

1.)    D

2.)    A

3.)    F

4.)    B

5.)    C

6.)    E

 


Matching the Columns

 

1.  History

A. Are rarely experts or technicians.

2.  Reality

B. Must be taken into account when shaping a message.

3.  Decision makers

C. Often can be traced to a lack of communication.

4.  Perception

D. We can’t change this until we change our perception.

5.  Problem with outside analysts

E. Often easier to get about strangers than on fellow employees.

6.  Background information

F. Shapes current perception.

 

Answers:

1.)    F

2.)    D

3.)    A

4.)    B

5.)    C

6.)    E

 

 


Summary

            As we have seen, once you get to know who your audience is, there are many ways to categorize them and target your information to specific groups and sub-groups. Whether you are dealing with people inside or outside the organization, preparing a speech that thousands will hear or a report to a half-dozen fellow workers, the same basic techniques are used to analyze your audience and target your material to it.

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Test

1. ______        If you are brought in to speak to an audience, the people arranging it can                                usually give you the information you want about them.

2. ______        You need to find out what your audience is expecting so you can meet                                    those expectations, but you should not inform them that you will not meet                             them.

3. ______        Once you know who your audience is, there is no need to compare their                                 anticipated level of knowledge to your own.

4. ______        It is easier to prepare a speech or presentation to a group that shares the                                same level of interest or knowledge about a subject.

5. ______        If you are not an expert, the experts in the audience will not lose interest in                  you or lose faith in your organization.

6. ______        When you have more than one audience, you can do an overall                                               introduction and summary that addresses everything you want to cover in                           specific terms.

7. ______        In many ways it is easier to get enough background information to                                           perform an in-depth audience or beneficiary analysis on your fellow                                         employees than it is on strangers.

8. ______        The better you know and understand your audience, the people you will be                 dealing with, the better your chances are of having a successful project/programme purpose                                  relationship with them.

9. ______        Doing some homework before you actually meet them wastes time, but                                   puts you at a distinct advantage.

10. ______      Public speakers need the same information about their audiences as a sales                 team would need before going in to make a product demonstration.

 

Answers:

1.                  T

2.                  F – You should inform them that you will not meet them because you are there to        do something else.

3.                  F – you should compare

4.                  T

5.                  F – will lose

6.                  F – general terms

7.                  F – it is more difficult

8.                  T

9.                  F – saves time

10.              F – different information

 


Bibliography

 

Blatti, J. (ed.) (1987). Past meets present: Essays about historical interpretation and public audiences. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

 

Brown, G. (1995). Speakers, listeners, and communication: Explorations in discourse analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press.

 

Cheek, J. (2000). Effective oral communication. Danville, IL: Interstate Publishers.


Glossary

 

Perception – Is shaped by past information. This must be taken into account when shaping a message designed to either reinforce or dispel the ideas or attitudes people already have.

 

Reality – We cannot change this until we change perception.

 

Experts – People who understand exactly what it is you do – or are offering – and how you do it.

 

Novice – They don’t really understand what your product does, how it does it, or even how or why to use it.

 


Learning Objectives

 

  • The better you know and understand your audience, the people you will be dealing with, the better your chances are of having a successful project/programme purpose relationship with them.
  • Once you get to know who your audience is, there are many ways to categorize them and target your information to specific groups and sub-groups.

 


Q&A

 

1.      What are some things you should know about your audience?

The first thing you should always know about your audience is who they are: their titles, jobs, specialties, and fields of expertise. You should also find out what they know, what their backgrounds are, and how old they are, or how long they have been with the organization. It is necessary to find out their similarities and differences. You need to find out what their primary interests are, as well as what the audience is expecting and prepared to hear.

 

2.      What are the different audience sectors you may encounter?

You may encounter experts, specialists, technicians, theoreticians, familiar, novice, and decision makers. Experts are people who understand exactly what it is you do and how you do it. Specialists are either theoretical or technical exerts in one aspect of the subject but may know little or nothing about the product or service in its entirety. Technicians know how it works, and aren’t really concerned about the theory behind it. Theoreticians understand the theory behind it and why it works, but are the last people to ask to fix one. Familiars know what you are talking about in general terms. Novices don’t really understand what it does, how it does it, or even how or why to use it. Decision makers are the people who will make the project/programme purpose decisions, actually decide if the organization should buy it or even make it.

 

3.      What are ten questions that data you probably already have will answer for you about your audience?
Ten questions that you probably can already answer are: Who are your best and worst beneficiaries/beneficiary segments? What do they have in common? How can you find more like them? What is the most efficient media to reach them? Who is most likely to respond to your product or promotional offer? What is the best method to motivate them? Which beneficiaries are most likely to remain beneficiaries? Which ones are the most likely to turn to someone else? What other products are they likely to purchase? Should you primarily focus in acquisition, retention, or maximization strategies to grow your project/programme purpose?

 

 

End of Module

 

 

 

A. Analyze Your Audience

 

Whenever we communicate, we communicate to a specific audience.   In interpersonal interaction, we have greater opportunity for clarifying ideas and developing a relationship.  When we write a memo to a beneficiary or delivers a organization profile lecture to potential investors, there is greater room for ambiguity.

 

Any message requires the support of an audience, even in cases where you are not asking an audience to do anything other than believe what you are saying.

 

Identify Your Target Audience:

 

Sometimes it is enough to know that a letter needs to be written to all beneficiaries or a presentation needs to be developed to the press corps.  Often, the audience for a message is more specific.  As such, the better defined an audience, the better you are able to tailor your message to that audience.

 

Identify Audience Needs & Values:

 

When constructing message it is ESSENTIAL to carefully and fully consider the interests, needs, values, beliefs and attitudes of your audience.  Generally, investors look to buy into organizations that are stable enough that they will grow and become more profitable.  Yet, the information shared with project/program capitalists might vary greatly from the kind of information shared with individual stock purchasers.

 

In short, you need to identify the specific needs of a target audience.  The more information you have about the what exactly a target audience believes, values or needs, the better able you are to provide information that will satisfy your audience.  This is not to imply that you only tell members of your audience what they want to hear.  Instead, you need to frame your message in a way that external stakeholders will best understand and accept what you are saying.

 

Frame the Message:

 

Once you know your specific audience and what the audience values and needs, you can carefully select language and evidence that will appeal to their interests.   Furthermore, you will be able to organize ideas so that you can lead your audience to a conclusion without losing them along the way.

 

Most importantly, framing the message requires that you establish a common bond with the audience, particularly when you attempt to persuade them.   An audience needs to know that you understand the situation as they experience it.  When an audience believes you can identify with their experience and that you are taking them into consideration as you develop plans and policies, they will be more likely to believe what you say and to do what you ask.