presentation skills audience analysis

Audience Analysis for Presentations: How to know your audience and present better

If you are in any business or public speaking domain, you must have heard of the term audience analysis. If you’ve ever given a talk where half of the people seem disinterested or distracted, it’s probably because you’ve overlooked the importance of audience analysis.

It’s high time to rethink about how to prepare a presentation. It’s always about the audience, so let’s start there. Celebrated speakers and leaders in history knew what their audience wanted and they used it to form an instant and prolonged connection with the mass. Though each person is different with their own perceptions and views, your job as a speaker is to find that common thread that connects all of them, and align your presentation along those lines.

In this article, we will take you through simple steps to know your audience and how you can use it to deliver better presentations, form better connections and impart values to your audience. You can also create better presentations in minutes with these PowerPoint templates from SlideBazaar!

What is Audience Analysis?

It always helps to know who you are speaking to and why they are listening to you. Audience analysis refers to the gathering of information about your audience to form a generalized opinion, and then using the data to weave your presentation well. This involves planning your presentation for the audience by adapting to their understanding, values and interests. In any form of public speaking, audience is of utmost importance and catering to their needs is what sets a great speaker apart from the rest.

It’s difficult to make assumptions about someone you’ve just met. But there are audience analysis techniques you can use to identify the subtle traits which may give you a better idea of what they want. In further sections, we will discuss which of these should be considered in the analysis of your audience along with tips to incorporate them into your presentations.

Why is audience analysis important?

1. knowing your audience helps you speak their language and gain their trust.

Audience analysis makes it easier to form a connection with the audience since you already know what they are looking for. Effective communication is about both speaker and audience being in sync in terms of their motives and actions. And the better you know the audience, the more both parties will benefit from the interaction. You can build trust among your target audience by addressing the pain points and suggesting tangible solutions.

2. Understanding their behavioral patterns helps you to persuade them to take desired actions

Knowing the values of your target audience gives you a window into knowing how they make a decision. This is very crucial because you never know when you might stumble upon a business opportunity or a potential collaboration. If your presentation is meant to educate the crowd or promote your service or to get a sale, knowing the behavioral patterns of your target audience will help you give a more compelling presentation. Some look for ways to save money and time, while some spend more time and prefer quality over quantity. Addressing them in your presentation is a promising way to get them on board.

3. Audience adaptation helps you be sensitive to their needs and expectations

By knowing more about the target audience, you can estimate how receptive they would be to different segments of your speech. Audience analysis helps you realize what emotions may trigger, offend and how to persuade them. You develop a better understanding of do’s and don’ts to follow in the presentation. You can choose the tone, analogies, jokes and call to action in a more audience-centric way, and this will create further impact on your audience.

How to know your audience?

At this point, you are convinced you should know your audience for delivering better presentations. But you must be wondering what you should look for in a group of people you’ve just met. Here are some factors which you can take a note of to make better assumptions about the audience.

1. Audience Demographics

Demographics refers to the statistical characteristics of a group such as age, gender identity, education, occupation, ethnicity, financial and marital status. Age and education level are very important since it highly influences how the information would be consumed. Dumbing down your audience will leave them distracted since they won’t benefit from your presentation. Similarly, overestimating their level of information intake will leave them exhausted. According to their background, there will be different angles of the same topic people will be interested in. Knowing the details in advance will help you prepare the presentation accordingly.

2. Knowledge of Topic

It’s very important to understand what prior knowledge the audience possesses regarding the subject. It determines how you should start your talk. If you’re talking to amateurs, you should probably start with a simple introduction of the topic along with its significance so that they feel interested in listening to you. If you’re talking to experts, you can jump into the topic and talk about more technicalities since you already have them on board. Understanding their experience and training in the topic can help you streamline your presentation. You can decide whether to use jargons or to use more broad examples during your talk.

3. Audience Size and Setting

The way you talk to a class of ten students is very different from the way you talk to a room of 300 business owners. Your speech at a funeral would be different from that at a wedding. So, it’s important to know how many people you will be addressing, and in what context. Will it be a closed room or an open stage? Would there be provision to include audiovisual tools (e.g., slides) or do you have to prepare a full-on speech? Knowing the size of your crowd will help you accommodate the right amount of interaction so that the conversation is lively and engaging.

Make sure you know what time of the day you will be speaking because people have different attention levels in the morning and late afternoon.

4. Values and Beliefs

Religious inclination, cultural backgrounds and general upbringing have a huge role in shaping how open people accept a new idea. Some might be reluctant to accept them unless they are convinced that it aligns with their system of belief. Consider the possibility of having people with different beliefs and value systems. You should take effort to not offend anyone. Try to understand their ideologies to fine tune your speech so that it’s not insensitive or distracting.

5. Means of Consuming Information

Where do your audience typically consume information from? Do they consume it online or do they resort to textbooks? Do they attend similar workshops and update themselves with the current trends? Are they regularly interacting with experts in the field or included in the studies themselves? All these matters when it comes to deciding how you should pass the information on. If they prefer discussions, you can include a lot of engaging activities. If they like to have capsules of information, you can include the main points in bullets before loading them with details.

Types of audience and how to deal with them

Based on the above-mentioned aspects, people respond differently to you. In this section, we look at different types of audience and ways to handle them.

Some might be reluctant to change their ways of thinking and you might need strong logical reasons to convince them. Some might be volunteers who readily accept a new idea and are ready to take the action you want them to take. Some might be the drivers of decision making in a group where they cut across distractions and ensure the promise is delivered.

1. Hostile audience: They are hard to convince, so have evidence for all your claims.

These are the egocentric people who question your claims and defend their views. The fact that audience is egocentric means that they are less open to new perspectives and ideas. When you spot such people in a crowd, don’t panic.

Listen to what they have to say and stress on the common points you share. This feeds their ego and can work well to have them on board with you. Don’t exaggerate or drag your points since they may distract or even offend them. Have clear and concise data for all your claims and present your conclusions in a compelling way.

2. Friendly audience: Use the shared interests in your favor.

There might be some people who are already excited about the topic and are willing to hear from you. They resonate with your ideas and support you throughout your presentation.

Talk to them passionately and tap into their emotions by using analogies or models similar to them. Friendly audience are the most loyal and easiest to convince. So, tell them what exactly to do, be it purchasing your product or signing up for your newsletter.

3. Apathetic audience: They don’t care, show them why they should.

This is the section of people who care least about what you have to offer. They have no interest to argue or discuss. They may zone out from time to time and are probably waiting for you to stop talking.

The first step is to make them a part of the conversation. Ask simple questions and be patient while they answer. Use interesting visuals to gauge their interest. Slowly bring them to your subject through strong points and show them why they should care. Don’t show off your skills, instead focus on what’s in it for them.

4. Uninformed audience: They have no expert knowledge, so start from the basics.

These are the people who have come to learn a deep understanding of the subject. They might have a very vague understanding of the topic and want to learn more. They are looking for someone who can explain to them in basic terms.

So, before you dive in, ask them what they know and start with basic examples and applications. Take time to teach them before persuading them to take an action. You want to avoid jargons or any terms which might be heavy for this section of audience.

Most crowds have most if not all kinds of personalities; so, prepare your presentation to fit all of them well.

Follow these steps in your next presentation

You have done a complete audience analysis and now you know what they expect from your presentation. How will you use that data in your favor? What changes will you make to your presentation? These bits of information are useful only when you know what to do with the data. Here are some steps you can follow to put audience analysis data into use.

1. Practice audience-centeredness in your presentation

Always remember to put the audience first. Tell them what’s in it for them. Actively ask them what they expect from your presentation. If you’re teaching a new concept to the crowd, tell them where they can apply it in real life. If you’re selling a product, show them the benefits of the service rather than the features. If you’re a researcher, tell them how your studies change the current scenario of the domain and how that will impact them. Be sure to choose the examples wisely.

2. Find a common ground

No two people have the same opinion or perception of things. It’s impossible to deliver exactly what your audience want and in the exact way they want. But, it’s wise to find a common ground where you include the audience without deflecting from your values and objectives. It doesn’t mean you should change the presentation fully to fit the audience’s wants; you will lose your authenticity. However, if you’re adamant about your views and delivery, people will perceive you aggressive and wouldn’t want to listen to you. This also helps in addressing each type of audience well.

3. Cr eate audience personas and practice

Based on your best assumptions, create a persona of your target audience and keep that in mind while practicing your presentation. Humans love undivided attention; everyone in the audience should feel like you’re speaking to them individually. Having a characteristic persona helps you devise techniques to address them. You can use the demographic details and their expectations of the subject to create a persona. Apart from presentations, you can also use this in business proposals to convey your message in the intended way.

4. Identify their pain points and address them in your presentation

Once you know what your audience expects and what their pain points are, you can then decide how to talk to them. Address their problems and give possible solutions. Convince them what you have to offer can solve the problems for them. Use tools like answerthepublic.com to know what are the common queries related to your topic. And draft your presentation to answer those questions in the best way possible such as to promote your product/service. This way, it will be easier to get them to take the desired action.

5. Go for audience segmentation if needed

If you think it’s better to divide the audience into different groups and approach them differently, do that. There can be topics that are relevant to different types of audience. Use the audience analysis data to identify and segregate potential groups in the audience. Doing this can help both the speaker and the audience since both don’t have to compromise much.

We have given you the tools and tricks to know what your audience wants and now it’s up to you to put into use. To help you with that, we have different presentation templates that will make it easier for your audience to receive the message better. If you’re looking for opportunities to incorporate audience analysis into your presentations more effectively, we have audience analysis templates exclusively designed for that.

Happy presenting!

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How to Analyse your Audience for a Speech

March 2, 2021 - Sophie Thompson

This article will teach you how to perform audience analysis for your speech or presentation and the different types of audience you might encounter. The type of audience affects the choice of language, humour, opening sentences, length and many more.

Here is a great overview from the  University of Pittsburgh :

Audience analysis involves identifying the audience and adapting a speech to their interests, level of understanding, attitudes, and beliefs. Taking an audience-cantered approach is important because a speaker’s effectiveness will be improved if the presentation is created and delivered in an appropriate manner. Identifying the audience through extensive research is often difficult, so audience adaptation often relies on the healthy use of imagination.

Four types of audience

This audience does not want to be listening to you. This could be for many reasons, from not liking the organisation you are representing, to wanting to get home and watch their favourite TV show.

They can be openly hostile and disagree with you. If audience analysis shows that you’ll be faced with this audience (e.g. you have the last slot of a busy day of presentation), consider the following:

• Work hard on  developing trust  and interest
• Construct your presentation from an area of agreement or point of disagreement
• Use plenty of references and data to back up your points
• Challenge them, ask questions during your speech and engage them

Speaking to a hostile audience? Make sure you understand the type of audience you will be up against and build you speech accordingly.

2. Critical

Often at technical conferences, you get critical people who believe they are extremely intelligent and relish the thought of proving part of your presentation incorrect. Use the following techniques:

• Use lots of evidence with strong references
• Argue both sides of the case, clearly stating pros and cons of each
• Try not to exaggerate, keep to the facts

3. Uninformed

This is the most common type of audience you will encounter. They might know a little about your presentation topic but certainly not in great detail.

• Open up with questions so you can understand the level of knowledge on your topic
• Spend a few slides going over the basics of your topic
• Use  simple language  and avoid acronyms
• Give basic facts and try to relate information to something people understand (e.g. if talking about space and using huge numbers, relate them to things people can comprehend)

4. Sympathetic

This audience is willing to listen and wants to be there. They can be interested in your topic, excited to see you talk (you might be a well-known figure in your speaking field), have an emotional attachment – these people are the easiest to persuade.

• Use the state of this audience to ask for help / funding etc.
• Trigger emotions which powerful stories

People checking their watches? Make sure you understand the situation your audience is in. If your presentation is the last of the day, you’ll most likely have a hostile audience. Take this into account and structure your speech accordingly.

Different personalities in a meeting

The following section discusses the four types of  audience personalities  and an audience analysis on them.

• Scrupulous about preparation before and after meetings
• Arrives on time, keeps to time and prevents drift
• Takes very detailed minutes and listens intently
• Reflects on discussion, makes considered contributions
• Drives decision making and ensures time is not wasted
• Cuts across distractions and leads meetings well
• Manages difficult people assertively
• Ensures the action plan is implemented
• Builds rapport easily and connects people together
• Remembers coffee, cake and connects people together
• Averts conflict, when it threatens
• Supports the team and leader fully
• Entertains, engages when in the limelight
• Challenges old way of thinking
• Generates creative ideas and opens new possibilities
• Tells the truth, brings on debate, breaks through niceties

Features of each personality:

Analytical  – 100% accurate, chronology, don’t rush, focus on facts, internally focussed, distant from others, systematic, critical

Driver  – 100% task, headlines, don’t waste time, focus on action, future focused, leading others, quick to decide, impatient

Amiable  – 100% social, relationships, don’t intimidate, focus on feelings, present focused, asks questions, dislike conflict, support, kind

Expressive  – 100% impulsive, vision & ideas, don’t limit, focus on themes, externally focused, makes statements, competitive & chaotic, unpredictable, energetic

How to gauge the audiences interest

Greet people before your speech.

This is a great way to perform early audience analysis. If possible, stand near the entrance and  greet people  as they come in. Ask them questions to gauge their level of knowledge and expectations. Example questions can be “what industry are working in?” and “how long they have been working at…”

Call and Response Technique

Ask carefully  prepared questions  at the beginning of you speech to understand the mood and experience of the audience. You could ask “Raise your hand if you have used a virtual reality headset before” for example.

Research the Event

Read up about the conference you are attending. Find out what the other presentations are about and how they might relate to your speech to give you a head start on audience analysis. This gives you an idea of how technical and prepared your audience might be.

For additional information on understanding your audience and audience analysis, read:

• Know your Audience: What it Takes to Persuade, Inspire and Motivate them
• Public Speaking: Know Your Audience

Key audience analysis factors

Audience expectations.

Different audiences can have completely  different expectations  about the topics and speaker. Ignoring these differences can have a negative effect on your speech. Imagine that you’re asked to speak at the memorial service for a close friend.

The audience will expect your speech to praise the life of the deceased. If you start talking about the flaws of the person, the audience is likely to react badly to it.

Knowledge of topic

You need to find out how much your audience already knows about your topic as an audiences knowledge can vary widely. Two ways to achieve this could be:

• Research who else is speaking at the event and the topics they are presenting (if it’s been made public)
• Gauge the type of people who will attend using the event website or social media profiles

Never overestimate the audience’s knowledge of a topic. If you start speaking about complex algorithms for robotics, but the listeners are not familiar with basic genetics, they’ll quickly lose interest and find something to distract themselves with.

On the other hand, drastically underestimating the audience’s knowledge may result in a speech that sounds condescending.

Presentation setting, such as what time you are presenting and style of the conference room, will influence audience’s ability and desire to listen.

Finding out ahead of time the different environment and situational factors. This will give you plenty of time to prepare for an audience of 1000 when you were expecting 50. You want to understand whether there will be a stage, where your slides will be shown, what technology is available to you, who is presenting before you and other factors.

Take into account the way that the setting will affect audience attention and participation. If you’re scheduled to speak at the end of the day, you’ll have to make the speech more entertaining and appear more enthusiasm to keep their attention.

Read more about how to  speak to an unruly crowd  if you’re stuck with an end of day presentation slot.

Audience size

Your speech will change depending on the size of the audience. In general, the larger the audience the more formal the presentation should be. Using everyday language when speaking to a group of 5 people is often appropriate.

However, you’ll need a well throughout structure and  literary techniques  when talking to 500 people. Large audiences often require that you use a microphone and speak from an elevated platform.

Attitude toward topic

Being able to understand the audiences attitudes about a topic will help you connect with them. Imagine you’re trying to convince people at a town hall to build a new college. You’ll be inclined to spend the majority of the speech giving reasons why a college would benefit the town.

If you find that the major worry was how much this would cost students, you can talk more about funding available to the students. The  persuasive power  of the speech is therefore directed at the most important obstacle to the building the college.

Demographics

The demographic factors of an audience include:

• Ethnic background
• Job or Career

These categories often underpin the individuals experiences and beliefs, so you should tailor your speech accordingly. Presenting at a conference in London will be a very different experience to presenting in Shanghai. The structure of your speech and words you use will probably be very different.

Using demographic factors to guide speech-making does not mean changing the goal of the speech for every different audience; rather, consider what pieces of information will be most important for members of different demographic groups.

Voluntariness

Audiences are either hostile, critical, uninformed or sympathetic. Knowing the difference will assist in establishing the content of your speech. It’s very hard to generate and maintain interest with a hostile audience. You’ll definitely want to know if you’re up against this so you can plan ahead for it.

Egocentrism

Most audience members are interested in things that directly affect them or their company. An effective speaker must be able to show their audience why the topic they are speaking on should be important to them.

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How to Improve Your Speeches Through Audience Analysis

This begs the question — how do you capitalize  on your audience analysis? That is, how do you reap the benefits to offset the time that you invested?

In this article, we examine how to improve your presentation based on your audience analysis.

8 Ways to Use Audience Analysis to Improve Any Presentation

We start by examining eight actions you can take to improve just about any presentation:

• What is Audience Analysis?
• How to Conduct Audience Analysis
• How to Use Audience Analysis
• Audience Analysis Worksheet [PDF Download]
• Dress like your audience, or maybe one notch above.
• Choose a presentation format appropriate to your audience and the event.
• Select the supporting points which will have greatest impact on this audience.
• Use words which match your audience’s vocabulary.
• Draw upon sources which your audience recognizes for statistics, quotations, examples, or other evidence.
• Choose stories which will resonate with your audience.
• Design visuals that impact your audience.
• Customize your call-to-action for this audience.

1. Dress like your audience, or maybe one notch above.

This is usually an easy way to boost your ethos as your audience will like you more if you “fit in” with them. Dressing significantly better or significantly worse than your audience makes you appear like an outsider.

For other clothing tips, see How to Dress for Public Speaking .

2. Choose a presentation format appropriate to your audience and the event.

Sometimes slides are necessary; sometimes not. Sometimes you need a lengthy Q&A; sometimes not. Some audiences expect a traditional lecture style; some expect the opposite. Whatever you choose, you should be guided by the needs and expectations of your audience; don’t merely choose the format you are accustomed to delivering.

Note that this doesn’t mean you must always conform to audience expectations. In rare circumstances, you might deliberately shock the audience with a style that goes against what they expect. It’s risky, but in the right setting, it may pay off.

3. Select the supporting points which will have greatest impact on this audience.

While preparing, you will usually have a large number of potential supporting points, but you can’t present them all within your time constraints. When choosing which to keep and which to cut, consider those which this audience will find most persuasive.

Will this audience be persuaded more by a financial argument or an environmental one? Do they value simplicity more than convenience? Do they value security more than freedom?

4. Use words which match your audience’s vocabulary.

This applies both to your spoken words as well as words which appear on your visuals.

Don’t say “dollars” when you should be saying “euros.” Don’t use acronyms or technical jargon that your audience won’t understand. Similarly, don’t be sloppy with terms where your audience expects high precision. Do your homework!

5. Draw upon sources which your audience recognizes for statistics, quotations, examples, or other evidence.

To maximize the impact of quotations, examples, and other supporting material, draw from sources that your audience knows and (hopefully) respects.

For example, quote Bill Gates when speaking to entrepreneurs or CEOs. Quote Justin Bieber when talking to teen-aged girls.

6. Choose stories which will resonate with your audience.

Stories offer tremendous benefits in your presentations, but you’ll lose much of the impact if your audience doesn’t identify with the hero in some way.

For example, when speaking to community organizers, tell stories where a community organizer is the hero. When speaking to a school auditorium of parents, feature parenting heroes instead.

7. Design visuals that impact your audience.

If you want to trigger emotions, don’t necessarily select the images that you find most impressive; select those which impact your audience most.

If you are using charts or diagrams, choose those which will answer the questions your audience members have.

If your slides carry a theme throughout (e.g. Star Trek), make sure it is appropriate for your audience.

8. Customize your call-to-action for this audience.

To maximize the likelihood that your audience takes action, make sure your call-to-action is tailored for them given their strengths and resources.

Suppose you are speaking on behalf of Habitat for Humanity, an organization that provides affordable housing. If your audience is a group of wealthy CEOs, then the call-to-action might be asking for monetary donations or to get their employees engaged. If your audience is a group of service club members, however, your call-to-action might be to invite hands-on participation on a new home.

How to Handle Special Audiences

The guidelines above apply to just about every presentation, regardless of any particular audience characteristic.

Sometimes, though, your audience analysis will uncover a specific fact that will impact your choices. Consider the following special audiences:

• Mandatory attendance Overall, it’s much easier speaking to people who choose to attend, because their attendance demonstrates their motivation. So, when speaking to an audience where participation is mandatory, you’ll need to convince them that there is value for them.
• Hostile audience When your audience is predisposed to oppose your message, you’ll need to practice logical jujitsu to show them how their beliefs really do support your objectives. You are probably doomed if you fail to recognize this in your analysis.
• Fatigued audience When you are speaking late in the afternoon (or evening), or even just before lunch after a tiring morning, it is tough to keep your audience’s attention. Keep it short. Keep it upbeat and high-energy.
• Conference audience Whenever you are speaking at a larger event, do your homework on how your presentation fits with the material from other speakers. The more you can draw connections for the audience, the more valuable you’ll be.

What to do with a heterogeneous audience?

We’ve assumed so far that you have a homogeneous audience, with a single audience persona (i.e. everyone attending has similar background, knowledge level, key demographic characteristics, etc.). This keeps it simple, but is rarely realistic.

Often, your audience will be mixed in some critical aspect. For example:

• You are presenting to potential customers. The audience is split between senior management (managers, accountants, legal) and the technical team. These groups have very different backgrounds, different issues of concern, and different vocabularies.
• You are presenting at a civic government meeting on a controversial issue. The audience is comprised of people from the following groups: pro-business; environmentalists; pro-family; etc.
• You are speaking at the parent-teacher association meeting for your child’s school. The audience includes parents, teachers, and school board members.

So, what do you do when your audience is a mix of two or more distinct sub-groups?

There are three basic strategies:

• Speak to only one sub-group of the audience and ignore the others. This is a risky strategy, but may be appropriate if, for example, the decision rests with a single person or a small group of people. It may make sense to focus your presentation on the decision-maker(s).
• Address each of your audience sub-groups with different parts of your presentation. Part of your presentation might be aimed at sub-group A, while the next part may address the concerns of sub-group B, and then sub-group C, and so on. This is a strategy employed often by politicians.
• Ignore the differences between audience members, and instead focus on common appeals. Although important differences exist between the sub-groups, you might choose to ignore these differences to avoid getting tangled up in opposing arguments. Your presentation can “stay above the fray” and focus instead on values, principles, and issues where there is common ground.

Depending on your situation, any of these strategies may be optimal for you.

Next in this Series…

In the next article, we’ll share a useful worksheet that can help you turn audience analysis into a positive, focused speaking habit.

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Great advice Andrew. Especially the point about speaking to the audience on their level. We tend to get caught up in all the jargon when the audience could care less. They need to hear the message not how “smart” we are.

As a supplement to point #4 (about vocabulary), I’d say speakers need to be careful when reusing parts of talks that were previously presented to people in a different role.

For instance, suppose you previously presented slides to clients or prospects, and now you’re presenting some of the same slides to salespeople (say, to train them about a new product or your sales process). In that case, where the slides say things like “your business”, you’d need to reword them to say “your client’s business”.

You’d think that would go without saying, but all too often slides get hastily reused without being amended to suit the new audience, which disengages people. (For more on that, please see http://wp.me/p1PHR3-45#right_you )

Great article Andrew! Especially the advice about clear and concise CTA component which is often forgotten or poorly executed (and many presentations depend on that execution).

May I adapt your fantastic audience analysis worksheet (with attribution, of course) for inclusion in a public speaking course I am developing?

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Anete Ezera March 23, 2023

Presentation skills are a crucial aspect of communication in today’s world. Whether you’re delivering a pitch to potential investors, giving a lecture in front of a class, or trying to make a point at a meeting, your ability to effectively present your ideas can greatly impact your success. However, not everyone is a natural-born speaker. Many struggle with nerves and self-doubt when it comes to presenting in front of an audience. But don’t worry! Improving your presentation skills is possible with practice and dedication. In this blog post, we’ll provide you with practical tips that will help you become a confident and engaging speaker. From preparing your material to engaging with your audience, we’ll cover everything you need to know to take your presentation skills to the next level. So whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your existing presentation skills, read on for all the advice and inspiration you need to succeed.

Types of Presentations

Before we dive into specific presentation skills, it’s important to define the different types of presentations that may require different skills in how they’re presented. There are several types of presentations you can choose from, each with its own distinct format and style. Let’s take a look at some of the most common types of presentations:

Narrative presentations

In these types of presentations, the speaker focuses on telling a story that engages the audience and reinforces the main message. This type of presentation is perfect for engaging and entertaining an audience. It helps to keep the audience interested and focused and can be a great way to reinforce the main message. However, it can also be time-consuming to prepare a well-structured narrative.

Informative presentations

These types of presentations are designed to provide information on a specific topic. The speaker focuses on delivering accurate and relevant information to the audience in an organized and straightforward manner. This type of presentation is great for providing accurate and relevant information to the audience. The organized and straightforward delivery makes it easy for the audience to understand and retain the information. However, it can be difficult to keep the audience engaged and interested if the presentation is too dry or lacks excitement.

Persuasive presentations 

In persuasive presentations, the speaker aims to convince the audience to take a specific action or adopt a particular point of view. This type of presentation often includes arguments, statistics, and other persuasive techniques. However, if the arguments are weak or the persuasive techniques are ineffective, the presentation can fall flat and fail to achieve its intended outcome.

Demonstrative Presentations

These types of presentations focus on demonstrating a product or service to the audience. The speaker often includes visual aids, such as slides or videos, to help illustrate the key features and benefits of the product or service. However, it can be difficult to keep the audience engaged if the demonstration is too lengthy or repetitive.

Instructional Presentations

Instructional presentations are designed to teach the audience a specific skill or provide them with step-by-step instructions. The speaker often uses visual aids, such as diagrams or slides, to make the instructions clear and easy to follow. It’s perfect for teaching the audience how to perform a specific task. The use of visual aids, such as diagrams or slides, makes it easy for the audience to understand and follow the instructions. In this type of presentation, it’s important to present the instructions in a highly engaging way so the audience doesn’t lose interest.

Choosing the right type of presentation format can greatly impact the success of your presentation. Consider the audience, the message you want to convey, and the resources available to you, when deciding on the best presentation format for your needs. Once you’ve decided on a presentation format, you can move on to developing certain presentation skills that are most important for the specific case. 

Presentation delivery methods

The way you deliver your presentation is crucial. Therefore, we want to highlight this aspect before we dive into other effective presentation skills. A delivery method can make or break a presentation, regardless of the quality of the content. There are various methods of presentation delivery. The choice of method depends on the type of audience, the topic of the presentation, and the desired outcome. Discover 4 ways you can deliver a presentation and what kind of skills and approach they require. 

Traditional delivery

One of the most common presentation delivery methods is the traditional method of standing in front of an audience and delivering a speech. This method is suitable for formal presentations, such as keynote speeches, lectures, and corporate presentations. This method requires the speaker to have excellent public speaking skills, including voice modulation, body language, and eye contact. A traditional presentation delivery usually follows a classical presentation outline that has a clear beginning, middle, and end. 

Visually-focused presentation delivery

Another method of presentation delivery is the use of visual aids. This method involves using multimedia tools, such as images, videos, and infographics. Visual aids are effective because they can help the audience to better understand complex information, and they can also serve as a reference for the audience to refer to after the presentation. However, visuals should not be the sole focus of the presentation, as they can distract the audience from the message. 

If you want to create a visually-focused presentation, discover different Prezi presentation templates, and be sure to add images, videos, data visualizations, GIFs, stickers, and other visuals that you can find in Prezi’s content library and Prezi Design.  

If you want to learn more about the use of visuals in a presentation, and what are the best design practices, watch this video:

Interactive presentation delivery

Another way to deliver a presentation is by using interactive methods such as group discussions, role-plays, and simulations. This method is suitable for presentations that require the audience to actively participate in the presentation. Interactive presentations can be useful for training sessions, team-building exercises, and workshops. 

On Prezi, you can create highly interactive presentations where your audience can be active participants. Prezi’s non-linear format allows you to jump between topics instead of flipping through slides, so your presentation feels more like a conversation than a speech.

Storyteller delivery

The last method of presentation delivery is storytelling. It involves the use of anecdotes, personal experiences, and stories to deliver a message. Storytelling is a highly effective tool because it can help the audience to relate to the message on a personal level. 

Storytelling can also be used to make a presentation more engaging and entertaining. 

If you want to visually showcase a relation between two aspects and capture the transitional movement in a timeline, use motion, zoom, and spatial relationships in a Prezi presentation to showcase the nuances of your story world. 

Regardless of the presentation delivery method, make sure to follow the best presentation practices:

• Be well-prepared and knowledgeable about the topic. This can be achieved through research, practice, and rehearsal.
• Use clear and concise language that is easy for the audience to understand. You should avoid using jargon and technical terms, or you can take time to explain them to the audience. 
• Work on engaging the audience using eye contact, body language, and humor. This can help you establish a connection with the audience and make the presentation more engaging. 
• Be mindful of the time and ensure that the presentation is delivered within the allotted time frame.  
• Use effective visuals, if applicable, to support your message without overpowering it.

Effective presentation skills

There are numerous skills that you can develop to improve your presentations. In this article, we’ve summoned the following 8 presentation skills that are essential to any presenter that wants to make an impact with their message.

1. Effective communication

Effective communication skills are critical when it comes to presenting information to others. Presentations require a clear and concise message, and communication skills are key in delivering this message to your audience. Good communication skills allow you to connect with your audience, build rapport, and maintain engagement throughout the presentation. In addition, communication skills allow you to articulate your ideas and arguments clearly, and to respond to questions or challenges effectively. 

To improve this skill, practice speaking in front of a mirror or recording yourself to identify areas where you may need improvement. Also, consider using vocal techniques such as varying your tone and volume to keep your audience engaged.

2. Confident body language

Confident body language is an essential presentation skill as it communicates to the audience that the speaker is credible, knowledgeable, and in control. A confident posture, eye contact, and gestures can help you establish a strong presence and build rapport with the audience. It also helps you to convey your message more effectively. 

To practice confident body language, start by standing tall with shoulders back and head held high. Also, make eye contact with the audience and use natural hand gestures to emphasize key points. It’s also important to practice speaking clearly and with conviction, as this can further enhance the impact of confident body language during a presentation. 

If you’re interested in learning more about body language, read our article on 9 secrets to a confident body language . 

3. Audience engagement

Being able to engage your audience is a crucial presentation skill because it ensures that your message is well-received and understood. When you engage your audience, you capture their attention and maintain their interest throughout your presentation. This can make the difference between a successful presentation and one that falls flat. Holding the attention of your audience requires a combination of factors, such as having a clear message, being confident and comfortable in your delivery, using visual aids effectively, and connecting with your audience on a personal level. 

To improve this skill, you can practice rehearsing your presentation in front of friends or colleagues and seeking feedback. You can also try studying successful public speakers and their techniques and incorporating audience participation activities into your presentation to keep them engaged and interested. 

Additionally, you can engage your audience by opting for a motion-based presentation. It’ll enhance the impact of your content and ideas, making it more captivating for your audience to watch than a slide-based presentation. On Prezi, you can use motion, spatial relationships, and zooming effects to create highly impactful presentations. 

4. Time management

Time management is an essential presentation skill as it helps to ensure that you deliver your message effectively and efficiently within the allotted time. Poor time management can lead to an unprofessional and unprepared presentation, leaving the audience disinterested or confused.

To practice good time management, begin by planning and rehearsing your presentation in advance. It’s important to allocate sufficient time to each section and consider factors such as audience engagement and potential interruptions. You can also use time-tracking tools and practice pacing yourself during rehearsals to ensure you stay on schedule. By mastering time management, you can deliver a polished and engaging presentation, leaving a positive and lasting impression on your audience.

5. Content organization

Effective organization of presentation content is crucial for any presenter, as it determines the clarity and impact of the message. Organized content can help you convey your ideas in a logical and coherent manner, which aids in maintaining the audience’s attention and retention of information. 

To ensure that your presentation’s content is well-organized, it’s important to follow a few key steps. 

• Identify the main points you want to convey and arrange them in a logical order.
• Create a clear outline that includes an introduction, main body, and conclusion.
• Use transition words or phrases to smoothly connect each point to the next. 
• Ensure that your presentation has a consistent flow and that each point supports your overall message. 

By following these steps, you can effectively organize your presentation’s content and create a memorable and impactful experience for the viewers.

If you’re creating a sales presentation, be sure to read our step-by-step guide on crafting a winning sales presentation .

Also, discover how to best structure your presentation based on your presentation goal in this video:

6. Storytelling 

Storytelling is a powerful presentation skill that can captivate your audience’s attention and enhance the impact of your message. Stories allow us to connect with people on a deeper emotional level, and help us convey complex ideas in an easy-to-understand way. When we tell a story, we engage our audience, evoke their imagination, and inspire them to take action. 

To develop strong storytelling skills, you should practice telling stories with a clear beginning, middle, and end that convey a message or lesson. It’s also important to incorporate sensory details, such as sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste, to help the audience visualize the story. Also, make sure to focus on the tone of your delivery, including voice inflection, body language, and facial expressions, to effectively convey the emotions and dynamics of the story. Finally, use one of Prezi’s presentation templates like the one visualized below, or create your own story presentation on Prezi and visualize relations between topics, events, and characters using spatial relationships and visual hierarchy. 

By mastering the art of storytelling, you can deliver a powerful presentation that resonates with the audience and creates a lasting impression.

7. Adaptability

Adaptability is a crucial presentation skill – it allows you to adjust and respond to unexpected situations, changes, and challenges during the presentation. The key is to be properly prepared. This means researching your topic and practicing your presentation speech enough so that you’re prepared for any changes or questions that may arise. When you’re prepared, you’ll feel more present and be able to read the room and adjust to your audience’s needs and interests. Also, be flexible and open-minded to new information, feedback, and audience reactions. This skill will enable you to think on your feet and modify your content or delivery style accordingly. 

And lastly, you want to uphold the quality of your presentation no matter where you’re presenting, online or offline. If you need to adapt your presentation to an online experience, use Prezi Video and simply import your already-existing Prezi, Powerpoint, or Google slides, and deliver the same level of presence and quality as offline. With Prezi Video, you can showcase your slides next to you on-screen as you present, keeping that face-to-face interaction. 

Make sure to check out Prezi Video templates that you can find in Prezi’s template gallery .

8. Confidence

Last but definitely not least, one of the key presentation skills a great presenter possesses is confidence . Presenting with confidence can help you engage your audience and convince them of your authority and knowledge on the topic at hand. When you exude confidence, the audience is more likely to trust you and your message, leading to better communication and understanding. 

Developing confidence can be achieved through several methods. Practicing your speech multiple times, visualizing a successful presentation, and focusing on positive self-talk are all techniques that can help boost your confidence. Additionally, learning to control body language and voice tone can also have a positive effect on confidence levels during your time in the spotlight. 

By implementing these strategies, you can build your confidence and improve your presentation skills each time you’re speaking in front of an audience. 

Discover more about effective presentation skills in this video:

How to improve public speaking and presentation skills

While working on the effective presentation skills we listed above, you may feel nervous about public speaking in general. It’s no secret that public speaking can be a daunting task for many people. However, if you want to be a powerful, confident, and impactful presenter, you need to overcome your fear of anxiety of public speaking and improve the way you feel and appear when presenting. 

If you want to learn more about different techniques that can help you calm down before a presentation, here’s a helpful video for you to watch:

To help you become better at public speaking, we summoned 20 tips you can follow:

1. Practice, practice, practice

One of the most effective ways to become more comfortable with public speaking is to practice your speech as much as possible. When you practice, you can work out any kinks or rough spots that you may encounter when giving your speech in front of an audience. Additionally, practicing allows you to become more familiar with the material, making it easier to remember and deliver with confidence. While it may be tempting to simply read your speech from a script or cue cards, practicing your speech will allow you to internalize the material and deliver it with greater ease, flow, and naturalness. Therefore, it’s highly recommended that you take the time to practice your speech as much as possible before giving it in front of an audience, whether that be your friends, family, or colleagues.

2. Use presenter notes 

Preparing for a presentation can be a lengthy endeavor, particularly if you aim to memorize the entire script. Trying to remember every point can be challenging. Plus, the stress of public speaking can cause you to overlook crucial details. Jotting down your talking points can help you stay organized and avoid forgetting any essential information. However, relying solely on flashcards or paper notes may not be ideal. Constantly glancing at sticky notes or looking away from your audience can disrupt the flow of your presentation and disconnect you from your listeners. Instead, try using presenter notes on Prezi , where you can easily add notes to each slide. While presenting, you’ll be the only one that sees them, helping you deliver an impressive presentation with maximum confidence. 

3. Know your audience

When delivering a speech, it’s important to analyze and understand the audience you’ll be speaking to. By doing so, you can tailor your speech to their interests and needs. This means that you should take into account factors such as their age range, educational background, and cultural or professional affiliations. Additionally, it’s important to research the topic you’ll be discussing thoroughly and provide examples that are relevant to your audience. By doing this, you can ensure that your message will resonate with your listeners and leave a lasting impact.

4. Start with a strong opening

To really captivate your audience, it’s important to start with a strong opening that grabs their attention and sets the tone for the rest of your speech. One approach could be to start with a thought-provoking question or a powerful anecdote that relates to your topic. Alternatively, you could begin with a surprising fact or statistic that shocks and intrigues your listeners. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s attention-grabbing and relevant to the message you want to convey. Remember, the opening of your speech is your chance to make a lasting impression, so make it count!

Discover other ways to start your presentation speech and watch this video for more tips on starting a virtual presentation: 

5. Use humor

Using humor can be a great way to start off a presentation. It can help to reduce the tension in the room and make your audience feel more at ease. For example, you could start off with a joke or a funny story that relates to your topic. Alternatively, you could use a humorous image or meme to grab your audience’s attention. Just be sure not to overdo it – too many jokes can detract from your message and make you seem unprofessional. Remember that the ultimate goal of your presentation is to communicate information and ideas effectively, so use humor wisely.

6. Incorporate stories

Using stories in your speech can be an incredibly powerful tool. Personal stories, in particular, can help illustrate your points and make your message more memorable. By sharing a personal experience, you can connect with your audience on a deeper level and create an emotional bond. This can help them better understand your message and remember it long after your speech is over.

One way to incorporate personal stories into your speech is to draw from your own life experiences. Think about a time when you faced a challenge or overcame an obstacle, and how that experience taught you something valuable. Share that story with your audience and explain how the lessons you learned can be applied to their lives as well.

You can also use stories to illustrate more abstract concepts. For example, if you’re giving a talk about the importance of perseverance, you could share a story about someone who faced numerous setbacks but refused to give up. By sharing that story, you can make the concept of perseverance more concrete and relatable to your audience.

7. Use pauses

Using pauses is a great way to enhance your communication skills. In fact, when you take breaks in your speech, can help you gather your thoughts and think more clearly. Pausing also allows you to emphasize key points you want to make in your speech. Additionally, by using pauses strategically, you give your audience time to process the information you’re sharing with them, which can help ensure that they understand and retain it better. All in all, incorporating pauses into your speaking style can be incredibly effective in making your message more impactful and memorable.

8. Speak clearly and loudly

When delivering a speech or presentation, it’s important to speak in a manner that is clear and easy to understand. However, it’s equally important to ensure that your voice is projected loudly enough for your audience to hear you. Speaking too softly can make it difficult for people in the back of the room or in larger spaces to hear what you’re saying, which can lead to confusion and a lack of engagement. To avoid this, try to practice projecting your voice and enunciating your words clearly before you give your speech. You can also use tools like microphones or audio amplifiers to help ensure that your message is heard loud and clear by everyone in the room.

9. Take deep breaths

Taking deep breaths is a great way to help you relax and calm your nerves, but there are other things you can do too. For example, you might want to try some light yoga or stretching exercises to loosen up your muscles and release tension. Also, you could take a warm bath or shower to soothe your body and mind. Another option is to listen to some calming music or read a book that you enjoy. By taking the time to find what works best for you, you can develop a personalized relaxation routine that you can turn to whenever you need it.

10. Use repetition

Repetition is a powerful tool that can help you drive the point home in your speech. By repeating key points, you can reinforce your message and increase your chances of being remembered. In addition, repetition can help you emphasize important ideas and create a sense of rhythm in your speech. It can also be used to build suspense and create a sense of anticipation in your listeners. With these benefits in mind, it’s clear that repetition is an essential aspect of effective public speaking.

11. Use active verbs

One way to improve the effectiveness of your speech is to use active verbs. Active verbs help to create a more engaging and dynamic presentation, as they convey a sense of action and energy. By using active verbs, you can help to capture your audience’s attention and hold their interest throughout your speech.

In addition to using active verbs, it’s also important to consider the pace and rhythm of your speech. Varying the speed and tone of your delivery can help to keep your audience engaged and prevent them from becoming bored or disinterested.

Another way to enhance the impact of your speech is to use vivid language and descriptive imagery. By painting a vivid picture with your words, you can help to create a more memorable and impactful presentation. For example, instead of simply saying “the sky was blue,” you could describe it as “a brilliant shade of deep blues, like the ocean on a clear summer day.”

By focusing on these key elements of effective speechwriting, you can help to create a more engaging and impactful presentation that will leave a lasting impression on your audience.

12. Ask rhetorical questions

Rhetorical questions are a powerful tool that can help make your speech more engaging and interactive. They can be used to stimulate critical thinking, provoke curiosity, and encourage the audience to reflect on the topic at hand. By asking a thought-provoking question, you can capture the audience’s attention and encourage them to think about the subject matter in a new and different way. Furthermore, rhetorical questions can be used to create a sense of anticipation and excitement, as the audience eagerly anticipates the answer to the question you have posed. 

13. Use metaphors and similes

Metaphors and similes are powerful tools that can help individuals better understand complex concepts. They are like a flashlight that illuminates the dark corners of the mind, providing clarity and insight. By comparing two seemingly different things, metaphors and similes can create a bridge between the familiar and the unfamiliar, allowing individuals to grasp difficult ideas with ease. In our fast-paced world, where information overload is a common issue, the use of metaphors and similes can help cut through the noise and deliver a clear message. So, the next time you encounter a challenging concept, remember to use these techniques to shed light on the subject matter.

14. Prepare handouts

When giving a speech, it’s important to remember that your audience needs to be able to follow along with what you’re saying. One way to help them do this is by using handouts. Handouts can be a great way to enhance your presentation because they allow you to provide additional information that may not be covered in your speech. For example, you can use handouts to provide graphs, charts, or other visuals that illustrate your points. Additionally, handouts can be a useful tool for your audience to take notes and refer back to later. By providing handouts, you can ensure that your audience is engaged and able to fully understand the information you’re presenting.

15. Incorporate props

Using props during your speech is a great way to enhance your delivery and keep your audience engaged. By incorporating visual aids such as props, you can help to illustrate your points and add depth to your content. Additionally, props can be used to make abstract concepts more concrete and easier for your audience to understand. For example, if you’re delivering a speech on the importance of recycling, you could bring in a visual prop such as a bin of recyclable materials to help drive home your message. Overall, the use of props can help take your speech to the next level while making it more memorable and impactful for your audience.

16. Practice in front of a mirror

Another useful tip for improving your presentation skills is to practice in front of a mirror. Not only can this help you perfect your body language and delivery, but it can also give you a better sense of how you come across to others. Additionally, practicing in front of a mirror can help you identify any nervous habits or tics that you may have, allowing you to work on eliminating them before your actual presentation. Overall, incorporating mirror practice into your preparation routine can be a simple yet effective way to boost your confidence and improve your presentation skills.

17. Join a public speaking group

Joining a public speaking group is a great way to improve your public speaking skills. Not only will you have the opportunity to practice speaking in front of others, but you’ll also receive valuable feedback that can help you improve. Additionally, by joining a group, you’ll have the chance to meet and network with other like-minded individuals who share a passion for public speaking. This can lead to new opportunities and connections that can benefit you both personally and professionally. Finally, being part of a public speaking group can also provide a sense of community and support, as you work together with others to achieve your goals and improve your skills.

18. Record yourself 

Another way to enhance your public speaking skills is to record yourself. By doing this, you can identify areas where you need to improve and refine your delivery. When you listen to yourself speak, you can pay attention to your pitch, pacing, and tone. You can also identify filler words or phrases, such as “um” or “like,” that you might use unconsciously. Additionally, recording yourself can help you become more comfortable with the sound of your voice. This can be especially helpful if you’re not used to hearing yourself speak for extended periods of time. Overall, recording yourself is a simple yet effective way to become a more confident and polished public speaker.

19. Learn to handle interruptions

One of the most common challenges that speakers face is handling interruptions. These interruptions can come in many different forms, such as unexpected questions, technical difficulties, or distractions in the environment. It’s important to learn how to handle these interruptions gracefully, as they can often derail a speech and throw off the speaker’s focus and confidence.

One key strategy for handling interruptions is to remain calm and composed. It’s natural to feel frustrated or flustered when faced with an interruption, but it’s important to take a deep breath and stay focused. Remember that interruptions are a normal part of public speaking, and they don’t have to ruin your presentation. If you need a moment to collect your thoughts, don’t be afraid to pause and take a few seconds to regroup.

By learning to handle interruptions with grace and composure, you can become a more effective and confident speaker. With practice and preparation, you can manage interruptions and keep your presentation on track, even in challenging situations.

20. End on a strong note

When giving a speech, it’s important to not only focus on what you say during the body of your presentation, but also on the way in which you conclude. A strong presentation should summarize the main points of your speech and leave a lasting impression on your audience. This can be achieved by reiterating your main points in a memorable way, making a call to action, or leaving your audience with a thought-provoking question. By doing so, you’ll ensure that your message resonates with your audience long after your speech has ended.

Another useful technique is to anticipate potential interruptions and plan how to address them in advance. For example, if you’re giving a presentation with a Q&A session at the end, be prepared for questions that might challenge your ideas or require additional information. It can be helpful to practice your responses to common questions ahead of time so that you feel more confident and prepared.

Discover other memorable ways how to end a presentation.

Effective presentation skills are key. While not everyone may be a natural-born speaker, with practice and dedication, anyone can improve their abilities to become a confident and engaging presenter. Whether you’re pitching to investors, delivering a lecture, or presenting in a meeting, being able to effectively present your ideas can greatly impact your success.

Remember, becoming a great presenter is a journey that requires patience, perseverance, and constant improvement. Don’t be afraid to seek feedback from others, practice regularly, and try out new techniques. With time, you’ll become more comfortable and confident in your abilities to deliver engaging and impactful presentations.

In conclusion, improving your presentation skills is a worthwhile investment that can pay dividends in both your personal and professional life. So take the time to hone your abilities, put in the effort, and embrace the opportunities that come your way. With the tips and techniques we’ve provided in this blog post, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a confident presenter.

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How To Analyse Your Audience For A Successful Presentation

Presentation checklist:

CONTENT – check

SLIDES – check

NOTES – check

PRACTICE – check

Presentations usually turn out to be events where we share what we know about the topic. The updates we think are important for the listeners. But whether it’s a toast at a wedding, an office presentation, a meeting or experience sharing at your alma mater – each event has a different kind of audience. And we speak for them , not ourselves. Some times, the audience will be a similar set of people – a team meeting or a diverse bunch – like a birthday party. Choosing your content that goes with the audience is the key to success. Here’s how:

Audience analysis is a key aspect of any speaking situation. The more audience oriented you are, the easier it’ll be for the audience to stay with you till the end. Here are a few ways to analyse your audience for a speech:

Audience analysis is one of the key aspects of any speaking situation

Audience type : By this, I mean the a general category that you can put your audience into. A family group or a work group. Generally younger bunch or a mixed crowd.

Audience size : This makes a lot of difference in the way you prepare for the talk . A small intimate group will need very relevant and focussed content. You may not use the stage or microphone. You gestures will be a lot smaller. A big group demands dramatic gestures and more power in your voice. And content that appeals generally to everyone.

Audience knowledge:  What is the extent of the audience’s knowledge in the subject matter. If your talk is a project status update and it’s mostly your team, feel free to use jargons and acronyms. But if it’s for the stakeholders to apprise them of your work, slipping in a little exposition might be a good idea.

Audience expectations : You may bring in the best content for the audience. But does the audience want to hear it? No matter what you think about the content, the audience comes with its own expectations. For instance, a toast – no matter many hilarious stories you have about the birthday boy – is appreciated when it is short and sticks to the point. Any longer and you are just getting in the between the guests and the festivities.

Audience demographic : Is the audience primarily men? Or is the majority women? What is the age distribution like? Are there different nationalities involved? It might not be possible to analyse every set of audience in such great detail. But you’ll thank yourself for considering these parameters where the speaking situation calls for it. For instance, you could be called up on to address the latest batch at your alma mater in a different country. It’ll help to dissect the audience more carefully here.

Cross cultural context : This is important especially if you are going to talk to people from a different country/countries. From small talk to sense of humour, you’ll need to watch out for the right spot. Some cultures love small talk whereas others frown upon it. You don’t want to assume everyone else will appreciate being asked after their families like we do in our country.

These 3 pillars of an impressive speech are a good benchmark to go by

There are different kinds of audience. But human nature is pretty much the same everywhere. And that’s why Aristotle , that wise old man from Greece, gave us three big pillars to base our formal speeches on. These can help you a great deal while you prepare for your presentation. You can be more of less sure that a talk based on these will be successful in most situations. Let’s look at what each means –

Ethos : is the credibility of a person as a speaker. It could by virtue of your standing in the community or the command over the subject. For instance, if you are a PhD holder in a subject related to the talk, the audience is more likely to take you as credible. Similarly, if you the project head, you are the person to talk about it. So you need to make sure that people look up to you as the right person to talk to them. You can do that right at the start – if people don’t know you well – by telling them your credentials and what makes you the right person to talk to them.

Logos : Logic is central to human understanding. Even if someone with authority goes up on the stage and proclaims that distributing free footwear to the poor will end world poverty – the logic doesn’t quite add up. And the audience will lose interest. Hence it is important to follow logic in your presentation.

Pathos: As you can see in the figure above, pathos is by far the most important. Pathos is appeal to emotions of the audience. Unless you create this connection, you’ll never grab the attention of the audience. This can be done by using similes, metaphors or stories. Pathos becomes all the more central when the speech involves getting people to take a course of action. Like donating for homeless kids or taking actions to save the planet.

The audience is the most important – yet often neglected – part of a presentation. Be sure to give them the respect due to them when they turn up to listen to you.

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Powerful and Effective Presentation Skills: More in Demand Now Than Ever

When we talk with our L&D colleagues from around the globe, we often hear that presentation skills training is one of the top opportunities they’re looking to provide their learners. And this holds true whether their learners are individual contributors, people managers, or senior leaders. This is not surprising.

Effective communications skills are a powerful career activator, and most of us are called upon to communicate in some type of formal presentation mode at some point along the way.

For instance, you might be asked to brief management on market research results, walk your team through a new process, lay out the new budget, or explain a new product to a client or prospect. Or you may want to build support for a new idea, bring a new employee into the fold, or even just present your achievements to your manager during your performance review.

And now, with so many employees working from home or in hybrid mode, and business travel in decline, there’s a growing need to find new ways to make effective presentations when the audience may be fully virtual or a combination of in person and remote attendees.

Whether you’re making a standup presentation to a large live audience, or a sit-down one-on-one, whether you’re delivering your presentation face to face or virtually, solid presentation skills matter.

Even the most seasoned and accomplished presenters may need to fine-tune or update their skills. Expectations have changed over the last decade or so. Yesterday’s PowerPoint which primarily relied on bulleted points, broken up by the occasional clip-art image, won’t cut it with today’s audience.

The digital revolution has revolutionized the way people want to receive information. People expect presentations that are more visually interesting. They expect to see data, metrics that support assertions. And now, with so many previously in-person meetings occurring virtually, there’s an entirely new level of technical preparedness required.

The leadership development tools and the individual learning opportunities you’re providing should include presentation skills training that covers both the evergreen fundamentals and the up-to-date capabilities that can make or break a presentation.

So, just what should be included in solid presentation skills training? Here’s what I think.

The fundamentals will always apply When it comes to making a powerful and effective presentation, the fundamentals will always apply. You need to understand your objective. Is it strictly to convey information, so that your audience’s knowledge is increased? Is it to persuade your audience to take some action? Is it to convince people to support your idea? Once you understand what your objective is, you need to define your central message. There may be a lot of things you want to share with your audience during your presentation, but find – and stick with – the core, the most important point you want them to walk away with. And make sure that your message is clear and compelling.

You also need to tailor your presentation to your audience. Who are they and what might they be expecting? Say you’re giving a product pitch to a client. A technical team may be interested in a lot of nitty-gritty product detail. The business side will no doubt be more interested in what returns they can expect on their investment.

Another consideration is the setting: is this a formal presentation to a large audience with questions reserved for the end, or a presentation in a smaller setting where there’s the possibility for conversation throughout? Is your presentation virtual or in-person? To be delivered individually or as a group? What time of the day will you be speaking? Will there be others speaking before you and might that impact how your message will be received?

Once these fundamentals are established, you’re in building mode. What are the specific points you want to share that will help you best meet your objective and get across your core message? Now figure out how to convey those points in the clearest, most straightforward, and succinct way. This doesn’t mean that your presentation has to be a series of clipped bullet points. No one wants to sit through a presentation in which the presenter reads through what’s on the slide. You can get your points across using stories, fact, diagrams, videos, props, and other types of media.

Visual design matters While you don’t want to clutter up your presentation with too many visual elements that don’t serve your objective and can be distracting, using a variety of visual formats to convey your core message will make your presentation more memorable than slides filled with text. A couple of tips: avoid images that are cliched and overdone. Be careful not to mix up too many different types of images. If you’re using photos, stick with photos. If you’re using drawn images, keep the style consistent. When data are presented, stay consistent with colors and fonts from one type of chart to the next. Keep things clear and simple, using data to support key points without overwhelming your audience with too much information. And don’t assume that your audience is composed of statisticians (unless, of course, it is).

When presenting qualitative data, brief videos provide a way to engage your audience and create emotional connection and impact. Word clouds are another way to get qualitative data across.

Practice makes perfect You’ve pulled together a perfect presentation. But it likely won’t be perfect unless it’s well delivered. So don’t forget to practice your presentation ahead of time. Pro tip: record yourself as you practice out loud. This will force you to think through what you’re going to say for each element of your presentation. And watching your recording will help you identify your mistakes—such as fidgeting, using too many fillers (such as “umm,” or “like”), or speaking too fast.

A key element of your preparation should involve anticipating any technical difficulties. If you’ve embedded videos, make sure they work. If you’re presenting virtually, make sure that the lighting is good, and that your speaker and camera are working. Whether presenting in person or virtually, get there early enough to work out any technical glitches before your presentation is scheduled to begin. Few things are a bigger audience turn-off than sitting there watching the presenter struggle with the delivery mechanisms!

Finally, be kind to yourself. Despite thorough preparation and practice, sometimes, things go wrong, and you need to recover in the moment, adapt, and carry on. It’s unlikely that you’ll have caused any lasting damage and the important thing is to learn from your experience, so your next presentation is stronger.

How are you providing presentation skills training for your learners?

Manika Gandhi is Senior Learning Design Manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at [email protected] .

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Top 10 Easy Tips for Conducting Audience Analysis

Conducting audience analysis is as important as giving the speech itself. It assists in getting into the heads of your audience. Appropriate use of the audience analysis results before your speech or presentation can exponentially improve your chances as a speaker to meet and exceed your audience’s expectations .

The concept of audience analysis infers to the practice of identifying one’s audience and modifying his/her speech to adapt to the understanding, interest, beliefs, and attitude of the audience.

It can be referred to as an audience-centered approach .

Importance of conducting audience analysis before your speech

Audience analysis strengthens the prospect of achieving an audience-centered presentation.

Ten (10) easy tips on how to conduct your audience analysis

Here are some ways you can successfully carry out an audience analysis before your speech;

The tips mentioned above will help you structure your presentation. Though these may look difficult, they are actually quite easy, simple and stress-free to conduct. As a matter of fact, these tips for audience analysis can be achieved in your living room either with a neighbor or even through an online interactive process (Facebook conference, Whatsapp meetings).

1.      Sample selection

If that’s the case, what will you do about your speech? Will you speak only to the graduates, will their younger brothers, and sophomores be sleeping in your speech?

2. Interact with Your sample audience

Meet with your selected sample. Interact with them to understand their mindset. Discuss the topic with them. This interaction will help you know how much the selected topic is of interest to them. Are you backing up the wrong horse? Is that the right topic for the category of the audience? Will you be able to impact/inspire much?

3.      Collect Data

One of the things you might find, following the example proposed above, is that the parents brought the younger brothers/sisters of the graduating class to inspire them to one day to also want to finish college.

4.      Analyzing the data

5.      become your audience.

The next point would be putting yourself in the shoes of your audience. When you do this as a speaker, you will be able to conveniently see the weak parts of your speech and how to build on it.

As a parent, on your son’s/daughter’s graduating day?

6.      Select supporting points appropriate for the audience and the event at large.

Do your very best to stick to the main point of your topic while trying to speak in public. Make sure that the topics are in resonance with the interest of the audience and their beliefs.

7.      Use words which will match your audience  vocabulary

It would be unproductive and annoying to the audience to be listening to a speaker who seems to be the only one in the room who understands what he/she is talking about. Don’t be that Speaker!

8.      Draw relevant sources

The best way to command authority is by citing sources which are well respected by your target audience. When talking to bankers, quote sources related to that. When speaking to young persons, quote sources which that age group can easily relate to.

9.      Choose stories that are relatable to your Audience

10.      personalize your call to action.

Be unique. Let your call to action be special, something that can be easily associated with. Let it have the capacity to spur up emotions in your audience. This way, your speech has a lasting effect on the audience.

Going back to our example

How to Outline A Speech – Easy 4-stage Strategy

How to become a confident public speaker – 6 tips, 5 tips on how to engage your audience in a presentation.

You can find yourself in situations where most of this information is not readily available. For example, you can be invited to attend an interview, and the only things you know are the company name, and the name of the person who called you. What will you do in this case?

References & Further Reading

Andrew Dlugan’s article on the topic is quite insightful. You can access it here http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/audience-analysis-how/

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Audience Analysis: Definition with types and uses

It can be hard to figure out who your audience is and what they want, both in business and beyond. You can use audience analysis to learn more about your audience and how to serve them better.

To reach your full potential, you must improve your analysis of the audience skills. In the age of online, it is easier than ever to capture audience data. If you perform this analysis, you can figure out your effective audience and reach your maximum potential while keeping them in mind. In this article, you will learn about the analysis of the audience, its types, and its uses.

What is audience analysis?

Audience analysis is the method of obtaining information about the people in your audience to better understand their wants, needs, values, and attitudes. 

It would be best if you first defined your target audience by determining their demographics, such as their gender, age, and where they live. After you’ve defined the potential audiences, you’ll be able to narrow the list down to a single target group for in-depth analysis .

Intended analysis of the audience has always been key to a successful business. Because of advanced technology, this process is perhaps simpler than ever before. Companies now have easy access to a wide range of audience information via social media channels.

If you can turn all that data into clear insights about your audience and what they care about, you can design a better business strategy.

Types of audience analysis

There are three types of audience analysis:

Demographic analysis

Psychographic analysis.

• Situational analysis.

Let’s look at these types!

Demographic data include things like gender, age range, marital status, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. You probably already know how many male and female students are in your public speaking class, how old they are roughly, and so on.

But how can you figure out who will be in an audience if you have never talked to them? Most of the time, you can ask the person or group that asked you to speak. They can probably tell you a lot about the types of people who are expected to come to hear you.

No matter what method you use to collect demographic information, be respectful from the start. For example, if you want to know if people in the audience have ever been divorced, you should know that not everyone will want to answer your questions. You can’t demand that they do it. And you can’t just guess why they don’t want to talk about it. You have to give them some space.

• Age is not just a number, as it can tell a lot about a person. For example, teens and people in their 20s have no memory of wars or living under a totalitarian regime.
• Even in the same culture, women and men have different experiences based on their gender. For instance, women are often kept out of jobs that are thought to be better suited for men.
• Religions are also very different: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and many more. Even within Christianity, there are Roman Catholic, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Orthodox (Greek and Russian), and many Protestant denominations.
• In the demographic analysis , the level and type of education are also essential factors. An airplane mechanic gets a very different education and training than an accountant, musician, or software engineer. Fraternities and sororities, sports teams, campus organizations, political parties, volunteer work, and cultural communities all shape how we see the world.
• Lastly, their jobs affect people’s ideas and interests because most appointments are misunderstood in many ways. For example, many think teachers work eight hours a day and get the summer off.

By doing demographic data analysis, you can find out a lot about your customers, as you can see. The best part is that many tools make it easy to do this analysis. For example, if you run ads on Facebook or Google, these platforms already have a way for you to study your audience that you can use.

Demographic information is pretty clear and easy to check, but psychographic information is not that easy to understand. A psychographic analysis looks at things like values, beliefs, opinions, and attitudes. Even though two people say they don’t buy junk food, they might have very different ideas about what foods are “junk food.”

Audiences will likely already know two main things: what you’re talking about and your brand. Psychographic segmentation can show how your audience is limited by the ideas they already have. If you know about these ideas ahead of time, you can write your message in a way that fits them.

• There may be misconceptions or stereotypes about your topic that people already know. When you do your audience analysis, include questions that show how much your audience already knows about your case. Try to find out if they have any stereotypes, oversimplified ideas, or biased beliefs about it. This could change the message you want to send and how you want to send it.
• On the other hand, pre-existing ideas about your brand are more about how customers see you at first. But it would be best if you focused on meeting the needs and interests of your audience, not on changing their minds about you or managing your image.

Google Trends is one way to do a psychographic analysis. Google Trends can be used to find the latest trends, but it can also be used to track marketing performance.

LEARN ABOUT: Level of Analysis

Situational analysis

In the realm of more traditional forms of speech, situational aspects of an audience include the audience’s size, attitude toward the speaker, prior knowledge of the topic, and occasion.

In the world of digital marketing and media, this refers to the size of your preferred audience, their attitude towards your product/company, their prior knowledge, and the websites or social media channels. They view your advertisements or interact with your products and services by this.

It is more challenging to collect this information when your audience is geographically dispersed because you are not addressing the audience directly at this time. But, similar to a world leader delivering a speech, it is essential to learn how to engage potential customers online, especially in a world of limitless options and audience information.

Uses of audience analysis in your business

Any successful marketing campaign must analyze audience data. Even creating your target audience teaches you about yourself and your smart goals . By understanding your target audiences, you can adapt your messaging to meet their needs and analyze a product’s flexibility in different contexts. Below are two uses of audience analysis:

Customer behavior

By doing audience analysis, you’ll learn how your customers act offline and online. With audience data from social media, you can see what other products and personalities people like. That will helps you figure out what they want.

For example, instead of just figuring out who is most likely to go to a spa, analysis tells you what kinds of treatments people are most likely to want based on the stressors in their lives. Once you have this information, you’ll be able to predict better what services to promote to which groups. This will help you be more successful in the long run by speaking to each person’s needs instead of painting with broad strokes.

Taking risks

There is always a time when a company or small business must decide to grow. Taking risks is a critical component of this growth. But you don’t want to take uninformed risks. With the right audience analysis questions, you can determine what risks are likely to pay off.

For example, if your audience data shows that most of your customers are younger, making changes to fit the needs of that group (like creating a product that is cheaper, more eco-friendly, etc.) helps ensure growth. On the other hand, if the people you want to reach are less tech-savvy, an interesting newsletter sent through email might work better than a social media campaign.

LEARN ABOUT:  Social Communication Questionnaire

In our global, online society, your audience may be spread out around the world. This connected world has lots of audience data. It can be hard to determine customer beliefs and preferences without immediate crowd feedback.

Using social media sites, audience profiles, and understanding where your purchases come from can help with audience analysis. Knowing your audience enables you to make smart choices and save money.

In the end, we had a clear idea of what data analysis is, what types there are, and its uses. Now it’s time to make changes in your organization to match. For your good, we suggest you use QuestionPro, which is much more than survey software. We have a solution for every specific problem and industry.

We also offer data management platforms, like our Insights Hub research repository.

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Presentation Training Institute

A division of bold new directions training, the importance of audience analysis.

One of the main goals of a presentation is to inform and persuade the audience. The ability to persuade the opinion of others is largely dependent on how well you know the audience. The more you know about the audience, the more your words will have an effect on them. That’s why it is so important to do research and perform an audience analysis prior to your presentation. Audience analysis involves learning about the wants and needs of your audience as well as their attitudes, beliefs, and prior knowledge of the topic. Through extensive research, you can gather information about your audience and use that information to tailor your message to better fit their needs.

Why is Knowing Your Audience Important?

Audiences can be fickle, and oftentimes they would rather be anywhere else than listening to a presentation. You want to engage your audience so you capture their attention and make your presentation worth their while. The only way you can do this is by presenting your material in a way that is relevant to your audience. Everyone has different perspectives, personalities, and viewpoints and this makes us value things in different ways. For example, if you are shopping for a car and really value trunk and luggage space, the salesperson would be wasting their time talking to you about gas mileage. They would be far more likely to sell a car if they spoke at length about the vast amount of space available in the vehicle. This same principle applies to presentations. The more your material is tailored to the specific needs and interests of your audience, the more memorable your presentation will be for them. 

Audience Analysis Factors

Audience expectations.

When people attend a presentation, they bring expectations about the topic and speaker with them. What does the audience hope to gain from your presentation and how can you make sure those needs are met? Knowing this information allows you to tailor your material so the message is congruent with the audience’s expectations.

Knowledge of the Topic

Audience knowledge of a topic can vary greatly and therefore, speakers should find out what the audience already knows about their topic. If a speaker launches into a technical presentation and the listeners are not familiar with the basics, they would lose interest right away. On the other hand, underestimating the audience’s knowledge may result in a presentation that sounds condescending.

Attitude Toward the Topic

How does the audience feel about your topic? You wouldn’t want to waste your time trying to convince them of something they already agree with you about. That’s why you need to find out ahead of time how the audience perceives your topic and whether or not you will need to be persuasive. 

Demographics

Demographics include a number of factors such as age, gender, religion, ethnic background, occupation, education, and countless other categories. Presenters must keep these demographics in mind as they choose which information to share with their audience.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

5.2 Three Types of Audience Analysis

Learning objectives.

• Understand how to gather and use demographic information.
• Understand how to gather and use psychographic information.
• Understand how to gather and use situational information.

Thinkmedialabs – Audience – CC BY-NC 2.0.

While audience analysis does not guarantee against errors in judgment, it will help you make good choices in topic, language, style of presentation, and other aspects of your speech. 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 speakers.

Demographic Analysis

As indicated earlier, demographic information includes factors such as gender, age range, marital status, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. In your public speaking class, you probably already know how many students are male and female, their approximate ages, and so forth. But how can you assess the demographics of an audience ahead of time if you have had no previous contact with them? In many cases, you can ask the person or organization that has invited you to speak; it’s likely that they can tell you a lot about the demographics of the people who are expected to come to hear you.

Whatever method you use to gather demographics, exercise respect from the outset. For instance, if you are collecting information about whether audience members have ever been divorced, be aware that not everyone will want to answer your questions. You can’t require them to do so, and you may not make assumptions about their reluctance to discuss the topic. You must allow them their privacy.

There are certain things you can learn about an audience based on age. For instance, if your audience members are first-year college students, you can assume that they have grown up in the post-9/11 era and have limited memory of what life was like before the “war on terror.” If your audience includes people in their forties and fifties, it is likely they remember a time when people feared they would contract the AIDS virus from shaking hands or using a public restroom. People who are in their sixties today came of age during the 1960s, the era of the Vietnam War and a time of social confrontation and experimentation. They also have frames of reference that contribute to the way they think, but it may not be easy to predict which side of the issues they support.

Gender can define human experience. Clearly, most women have had a different cultural experience from that of men within the same culture. Some women have found themselves excluded from certain careers. Some men have found themselves blamed for the limitations imposed on women. In books such as You Just Don’t Understand and Talking from 9 to 5 , linguist Deborah Tannen has written extensively on differences between men’s and women’s communication styles. Tannen explains, “This is not to say that all women and all men, or all boys and girls, behave any one way. Many factors influence our styles, including regional and ethnic backgrounds, family experience and individual personality. But gender is a key factor, and understanding its influence can help clarify what happens when we talk” (Tannen, 1994).

Marriage tends to impose additional roles on both men and women and divorce even more so, especially if there are children. Even if your audience consists of young adults who have not yet made occupational or marital commitments, they are still aware that gender and the choices they make about issues such as careers and relationships will influence their experience as adults.

In past generations, Americans often used the metaphor of a “melting pot” to symbolize the assimilation of immigrants from various countries and cultures into a unified, harmonious “American people.” Today, we are aware of the limitations in that metaphor, and have largely replaced it with a multiculturalist view that describes the American fabric as a “patchwork” or a “mosaic.” We know that people who immigrate do not abandon their cultures of origin in order to conform to a standard American identity. In fact, cultural continuity is now viewed as a healthy source of identity.

We also know that subcultures and cocultures exist within and alongside larger cultural groups. For example, while we are aware that Native American people do not all embrace the same values, beliefs, and customs as mainstream white Americans, we also know that members of the Navajo nation have different values, beliefs, and customs from those of members of the Sioux or the Seneca. We know that African American people in urban centers like Detroit and Boston do not share the same cultural experiences as those living in rural Mississippi. Similarly, white Americans in San Francisco may be culturally rooted in the narrative of distant ancestors from Scotland, Italy, or Sweden or in the experience of having emigrated much more recently from Australia, Croatia, or Poland.

Not all cultural membership is visibly obvious. For example, people in German American and Italian American families have widely different sets of values and practices, yet others may not be able to differentiate members of these groups. Differences are what make each group interesting and are important sources of knowledge, perspectives, and creativity.

There is wide variability in religion as well. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found in a nationwide survey that 84 percent of Americans identify with at least one of a dozen major religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and others. Within Christianity alone, there are half a dozen categories including Roman Catholic, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Orthodox (Greek and Russian), and a variety of Protestant denominations. Another 6 percent said they were unaffiliated but religious, meaning that only one American in ten is atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular” (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 2008).

Even within a given denomination, a great deal of diversity can be found. For instance, among Roman Catholics alone, there are people who are devoutly religious, people who self-identify as Catholic but do not attend mass or engage in other religious practices, and others who faithfully make confession and attend mass but who openly question Papal doctrine on various issues. Catholicism among immigrants from the Caribbean and Brazil is often blended with indigenous religion or with religion imported from the west coast of Africa. It is very different from Catholicism in the Vatican.

The dimensions of diversity in the religion demographic are almost endless, and they are not limited by denomination. Imagine conducting an audience analysis of people belonging to an individual congregation rather than a denomination: even there, you will most likely find a multitude of variations that involve how one was brought up, adoption of a faith system as an adult, how strictly one observes religious practices, and so on.

Yet, even with these multiple facets, religion is still a meaningful demographic lens. It can be an indicator of probable patterns in family relationships, family size, and moral attitudes.

Group Membership

In your classroom audience alone, there will be students from a variety of academic majors. Every major has its own set of values, goals, principles, and codes of ethics. A political science student preparing for law school might seem to have little in common with a student of music therapy, for instance. In addition, there are other group memberships that influence how audience members understand the world. Fraternities and sororities, sports teams, campus organizations, political parties, volunteerism, and cultural communities all provide people with ways of understanding the world as it is and as we think it should be.

Because public speaking audiences are very often members of one group or another, group membership is a useful and often easy to access facet of audience analysis. The more you know about the associations of your audience members, the better prepared you will be to tailor your speech to their interests, expectations, and needs.

Education is expensive, and people pursue education for many reasons. Some people seek to become educated, while others seek to earn professional credentials. Both are important motivations. If you know the education levels attained by members of your audience, you might not know their motivations, but you will know to what extent they could somehow afford the money for an education, afford the time to get an education, and survive educational demands successfully.

The kind of education is also important. For instance, an airplane mechanic undergoes a very different kind of education and training from that of an accountant or a software engineer. This means that not only the attained level of education but also the particular field is important in your understanding of your audience.

People choose occupations for reasons of motivation and interest, but their occupations also influence their perceptions and their interests. There are many misconceptions about most occupations. For instance, many people believe that teachers work an eight-hour day and have summers off. When you ask teachers, however, you might be surprised to find out that they take work home with them for evenings and weekends, and during the summer, they may teach summer school as well as taking courses in order to keep up with new developments in their fields. But even if you don’t know those things, you would still know that teachers have had rigorous generalized and specialized qualifying education, that they have a complex set of responsibilities in the classroom and the institution, and that, to some extent, they have chosen a relatively low-paying occupation over such fields as law, advertising, media, fine and performing arts, or medicine. If your audience includes doctors and nurses, you know that you are speaking to people with differing but important philosophies of health and illness. Learning about those occupational realities is important in avoiding wrong assumptions and stereotypes. We insist that you not assume that nurses are merely doctors “lite.” Their skills, concerns, and responsibilities are almost entirely different, and both are crucially necessary to effective health care.

Psychographic Analysis

Earlier, we mentioned psychographic information, which includes such things as values, opinions, attitudes, and beliefs. Authors Grice and Skinner present a model in which values are the basis for beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (Grice & Skinner, 2009). Values are the foundation of their pyramid model. They say, “A value expresses a judgment of what is desirable and undesirable, right and wrong, or good and evil. Values are usually stated in the form of a word or phrase. For example, most of us probably share the values of equality, freedom, honesty, fairness, justice, good health, and family. These values compose the principles or standards we use to judge and develop our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.”

It is important to recognize that, while demographic information as discussed in Section 5.2.1 “Demographic Analysis” 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.”

We also acknowledge 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 in your speech. Audiences are likely to have two basic kinds of preexisting notions: those about the topic and those about the speaker.

Preexisting Notions about Your Topic

Many things are a great deal more complex than we realize. Media stereotypes often contribute to our oversimplifications. For instance, one of your authors, teaching public speaking in the past decade, was surprised to hear a student claim that “the hippies meant well, but they did it wrong.” Aside from the question of the “it” that was done wrong, there was a question about how little the student actually knew about the diverse hippy cultures and their aspirations. The student seemed unaware that some of “the hippies” were the forebears of such things as organic bakeries, natural food co-ops, urban gardens, recycling, alternative energy, wellness, and other arguably positive developments.

It’s important to know your audience in order 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 from oversimplification is the level of sophistication your audience might embody. Your audience analysis should include factors that reveal it. Suppose you are speaking about trends in civil rights in the United States. You cannot pretend that advancement of civil rights is virtually complete nor can you claim that no progress has been made. It is likely that in a college classroom, the audience will know that although much progress has been made, there are still pockets of prejudice, discrimination, and violence. When you speak to an audience that is cognitively complex, 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.

When you prepare to do your audience analysis, include questions that reveal how much your audience already knows about your topic. Try to ascertain the existence of stereotyped, oversimplified, or prejudiced attitudes about it. This could make a difference in your choice of topic or in your approach to the audience and topic.

Preexisting Notions about You

People form opinions readily. For instance, we know that students form impressions of teachers the moment they walk into our classrooms on the first day. You get an immediate impression of our age, competence, and attitude simply from our appearance and nonverbal behavior. In addition, many have heard other students say what they think of us.

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. They might think of you as a jock, a suit-wearing conservative, a nature lover, and so on. 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. In order to help them be receptive, you address their interests directly, and make sure they get an interesting, ethical speech.

Situational Analysis

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 two main questions:

• How many people came to hear my speech and why are they here? What events, concerns, and needs motivated them to come? What is their interest level, and what else might be competing for their attention?
• What is the physical environment of the speaking situation? What is the size of the audience, layout of the room, existence of a podium or a microphone, and availability of digital media for visual aids? Are there any distractions, such as traffic noise?

Audience Size

In a typical class, your audience is likely to consist of twenty to thirty listeners. This audience size gives 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 him or her. 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.

There are many occasions for speeches. Awards ceremonies, conventions and conferences, holidays, and other celebrations are some examples. However, there are also less joyful reasons for a speech, such as funerals, disasters, and the delivery of bad news. As always, there are likely to be mixed reactions. For instance, award ceremonies are good for community and institutional morale, but we wouldn’t be surprised to find at least a little resentment from listeners who feel deserving but were overlooked. Likewise, for a speech announcing bad news, it is likely that at least a few listeners will be glad the bad news wasn’t even worse. If your speech is to deliver bad news, it’s important to be honest but also to avoid traumatizing your audience. For instance, if you are a condominium board member speaking to a residents’ meeting after the building was damaged by a hurricane, you will need to provide accurate data about the extent of the damage and the anticipated cost and time required for repairs. At the same time, it would be needlessly upsetting to launch into a graphic description of injuries suffered by people, animals, and property in neighboring areas not connected to your condomium complex.

Some of the most successful speeches benefit from situational analysis to identify audience concerns related to the occasion. For example, when the president of the United States gives the annual State of the Union address, the occasion calls for commenting on the condition of the nation and outlining the legislative agenda for the coming year. The speech could be a formality that would interest only “policy wonks,” or with the use of good situational audience analysis, it could be a popular event reinforcing the connection between the president and the American people. In January 2011, knowing that the United States’ economy was slowly recovering and that jobless rates were still very high, President Barack Obama and his staff knew that the focus of the speech had to be on jobs. Similarly, in January 2003, President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech focused on the “war on terror” and his reasons for justifying the invasion of Iraq. If you look at the history of State of the Union Addresses, you’ll often find that the speeches are tailored to the political, social, and economic situations facing the United States at those times.

Voluntariness of Audience

A voluntary audience gathers because they want to hear the speech, attend the event, or participate in an event. A classroom audience, in contrast, is likely to be a captive audience. Captive audiences are required to be present or feel obligated to do so. Given the limited choices perceived, a captive audience might give only grudging attention. Even when there’s an element of choice, the likely consequences of nonattendance will keep audience members from leaving. The audience’s relative perception of choice increases the importance of holding their interest.

Whether or not the audience members chose to be present, you want them to be interested in what you have to say. Almost any audience will be interested in a topic that pertains directly to them. However, your audience might also be receptive to topics that are indirectly or potentially pertinent to their lives. This means that if you choose a topic such as advances in the treatment of spinal cord injury or advances in green technology, you should do your best to show how these topics are potentially relevant to their lives or careers.

However, there are some topics that appeal to audience curiosity even when it seems there’s little chance of direct pertinence. For instance, topics such as Blackbeard the pirate or ceremonial tattoos among the Maori might pique the interests of various audiences. Depending on the instructions you get from your instructor, you can consider building an interesting message about something outside the daily foci of our attention.

Physical Setting

The physical setting can make or break even the best speeches, so it is important to exercise as much control as you can over it. In your classroom, conditions might not be ideal, but at least the setting is familiar. Still, you know your classroom from the perspective of an audience member, not a speaker standing in the front—which is why you should seek out any opporutunity to rehearse your speech during a minute when the room is empty. If you will be giving your presentation somewhere else, it is a good idea to visit the venue ahead of time if at all possible and make note of any factors that will affect how you present your speech. 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, to test out any visual aids, and to request any needed adjustments in lighting, room ventilation, or other factors to eliminate distractions and make your audience more comfortable.

Key Takeaways

• Demographic audience analysis focuses on group memberships of audience members.
• Another element of audience is psychographic information, which focuses on audience attitudes, beliefs, and values.
• Situational analysis of the occasion, physical setting, and other factors are also critical to effective audience analysis.
• List the voluntary (political party, campus organization, etc.) and involuntary (age, race, sex, etc.) groups to which you belong. After each group, write a sentence or phrase about how that group influences your experience as a student.
• Visit http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp and http://homes.point2.com and report on the demographic information found for several different towns or zip codes. How would this information be useful in preparing an audience analysis?
• In a short paragraph, define the term “fairness.” Compare your definition with someone else’s definition. What factors do you think contributed to differences in definition?
• With a partner, identify an instance when you observed a speaker give a poor speech due to failing to analyze the situation. What steps could the speaker have taken to more effectively analyze the situation?

Grice, G. L., & Skinner, J. F. (2009). Mastering public speaking: The handbook (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. (2008, February). Summary of key findings. In U.S. religious landscape survey . Retrieved from http://religions.pewforum.org/reports#

Tannen, D. (1994, December 11). The talk of the sandbox: How Johnny and Suzy’s playground chatter prepares them for life at the office. The Washington Post . Retrieved from http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/tannend/sandbox.htm

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.

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• Joel Schwartzberg

Demystify the numbers. Your audience will thank you.

While a good presentation has data, data alone doesn’t guarantee a good presentation. It’s all about how that data is presented. The quickest way to confuse your audience is by sharing too many details at once. The only data points you should share are those that significantly support your point — and ideally, one point per chart. To avoid the debacle of sheepishly translating hard-to-see numbers and labels, rehearse your presentation with colleagues sitting as far away as the actual audience would. While you’ve been working with the same chart for weeks or months, your audience will be exposed to it for mere seconds. Give them the best chance of comprehending your data by using simple, clear, and complete language to identify X and Y axes, pie pieces, bars, and other diagrammatic elements. Try to avoid abbreviations that aren’t obvious, and don’t assume labeled components on one slide will be remembered on subsequent slides. Every valuable chart or pie graph has an “Aha!” zone — a number or range of data that reveals something crucial to your point. Make sure you visually highlight the “Aha!” zone, reinforcing the moment by explaining it to your audience.

With so many ways to spin and distort information these days, a presentation needs to do more than simply share great ideas — it needs to support those ideas with credible data. That’s true whether you’re an executive pitching new business clients, a vendor selling her services, or a CEO making a case for change.

• JS Joel Schwartzberg oversees executive communications for a major national nonprofit, is a professional presentation coach, and is the author of Get to the Point! Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter and The Language of Leadership: How to Engage and Inspire Your Team . You can find him on LinkedIn and X. TheJoelTruth

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