Audience Analysis

Don’t underestimate the importance of knowing your audience. Do your research and learn the culture of the group to whom you’re presenting to ensure you are meeting their expectations. If you fail to appeal to the needs of the people in the crowd, your speech will be ineffective. Always complete an audience analysis before you script or outline your presentation because your audience should shape how you communicate your content, particularly your call to action.

Download the PDFworksheet Connecting with Your Audience to guide you as you read the tips below.

Tips:You will find sample responses for each of the questions on the handout. The responses are for a presentation about how college students with physical disabilities navigate their college campuses.

Who is my audience?

• • Note how the sample response not only provides some demographic information about the audience, but it also considers who the audience is as they relate to the context of the material presented.

What does my audience know? 

• • It’s important to meet your audience where they are and adjust your content accordingly.

    • What does your audience know about the material you are presenting?
    • Will they be familiar with jargon, acronyms, or technical verbiage?
    • Will you need to provide them sufficient context to ensure that your content is accessible to everyone in the room?

How do I want my audience to feel?

• • This question is often overlooked to the detriment of many presentations. Audience members want to connect with you, be engaged, and be entertained. Furthermore, if you want to persuade your audience, it’s important to remember that many audience members make decisions based on how they feel and subsequently look for data and logic that justify those decisions.

What do I want my audience to learn?

• • Consider what you want your audience to learn from your presentation and how you are going to help them learn it. Make sure that your goals are realistic. If your audience is unfamiliar with the specifics of your research design and process, you must weigh whether or not you should invest the precious time you have with the audience in explaining your methods. If you are presenting to a lay audience, consider using analogies to bridge common knowledge with the new information you’re presenting, avoiding jargon and acronyms with which the audience is unfamiliar, and focusing on what information is most relevant to this audience.

What do I want my audience to do?

• • This question is also overlooked during the presentation planning phase, but it is one of the most important questions presenters can ask themselves. At the end of your presentation, what do you want your audience to do? Should they take an action, feel inspired to learn more, or change their minds from an established point of view? Your call to action should be clearly articulated and impossible to overlook.

Dig Deeper

Watch more

Nancy Duarte (Harvard Business Review) - Watch communication expert Nancy Duarte discuss the importance of audience analysis.

 

Read more

The Public Speaking Project is a free online textbook. This chapter covers audience analysis strategies should you wish to dive deeper into this subject.

Pro Tip: What if I don't know who is in my audience?

This is a common question in the Public Speaking Center. If you don’t know your audience members, work with what you do know. If they are attending a conference where you are presenting, RSVP’d to a workshop you’re providing, or are listening to a pitch about your start-up, you can make a few assumptions about their motivations for being in the audience. With that said, the safest assumption you can make is that they are interested in your content. As a result, you should be prepared to make your content as accessible as possible:

• Avoid jargon and acronyms 
• Use analogies to bridge common knowledge with your new content
• Highlight the call to action—what does your content compel the audience to do?
• Refrain from diving too deeply into the details; focus instead on the big picture 

Interested in a one-one consultation with an expert to review your communication assignment, rubric, or activities? Looking for a workshop on teaching oral competency? How about a Public Speaking 101 workshop for your students? Visit the Sanger Public Speaking Center webpage Links to an external site.or send a message to: slc.speaking@austin.utexas.edu. Our team looks forward to empowering you and your students!