Know your audience, catch their attention

You don’t want to have someone fall asleep during your presentation? Then you have to know who your audience is. You have to understand not just how they want to hear a message, and you not only want them to like you. But, we’ll talk about the fact that you also want to deliver a message that will have meaning for the listener. Let’s look at why knowing your audience will make a difference in delivering your message.

Determining Your Audience

In sales and marketing, your audience is known as your target market. When you are crafting a message for someone in your target market, you consider whether or not they are in a consumer, industrial, or reseller market. If you are communicating to someone other than a target market, you still want to categorize them. Ask yourself these questions to help identify your audience:

• Who?
• Which ones?
• Where?
• With what characteristics?

Honing in on Your Message
The next step in developing your message is to fully flesh out why the recipient of your message should listen to what you are trying to communicate. In other words, what is the benefit to the listener? Will they:

• Gain information?
• Gain an opportunity?
• Avoid a negative consequence?
• Receive an emotional benefit?

This requires that you can articulate the benefits of your message.

Segmenting your audience

In marketing, the process of dividing your audience into similar groups is called market segmentation. However, the idea applies to any audience. Take the time to divide your audience into different segments – via different types of characteristics:

• Geographic (local, municipal, state, region, or nation)
• Demographic (Age, Sex, Race, Religion, family size, profession etc.)
• Psychographic (related to the feelings, attitudes, and beliefs of your audience, e.g., fun seeking, religious, or socially responsible)

To put all of these characteristics into use, you need to decide which information would be the most useful to you in identifying related members of your audience. For example, if you are crafting a sales message about million dollar yachts, income level is going to be more important than many other characteristics. But if you are developing a sales message about educational materials for children under five, you’re going to concentrate on family composition and the number and ages of children in the home since the majority of your audience will likely be able to afford books. In the end, it is up to you to brainstorm ways that you might divide up your audience in order to deliver your message effectively.

If you are in search of more ways to effectively deliver your message, take a look at “Presenting an Effective Message” written by MTD Training.

 
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