Audience Analysis for Effective Corporate Presentations

Introduction

Being called upon to present business facts and issues — such as a presentation of quarterly sales information at an in-person meeting with a group of stockholders including managers, salespeople, and customers — requires considerable preparation. Corporate presentations are widely regarded as difficult to get right because they must be delivered in different settings, to different audiences, and at different levels ("Corporate Presentation Tips," 2009). With this challenge in mind, this paper explores several key themes for addressing the central issues involved in delivering an effective corporate presentation.

Audience Characteristics

According to the Message Learning approach to persuasion, "persuasion is communication intended to influence choice. The basic theory suggests that persuasion is a function of attention, comprehension, yielding (degree of agreement with the presenter's position), and retention, which culminates in action. These immediate factors in turn are a function of the characteristics of the audience, support used by the presenter, and factors fixed in the environment" (Vogel, Dickson, and Lehman, 1986, p. 2).

To communicate a message effectively — and to persuade an audience toward a particular position — the presenter must be knowledgeable about the audience's characteristics. In this case, presenting to a group that includes both stockholders and customers requires attention to their educational attainment and knowledge level, so that the business language used is comprehensible to all parties. Although simplicity and brevity are important in presentations, there are instances when meaningful, detailed, and sometimes sophisticated points are needed to call attention to an issue, to impress the audience, or simply to match their level of thinking. Given the scenario at hand, the customers being presented to are drawn from the higher end of the consumer market, so their education and knowledge level can reasonably be expected to match the business language used. The stockholder group presents no difficulty in this respect. As Hoffman (n.d.) stresses, the key is to balance brevity with useful detail and illustrations.

Beyond education and occupation, several other demographic factors require special consideration: age, ethnicity or cultural background, gender, and socioeconomic status (HP Learning Center, n.d.). Devising an audience analysis sheet can be of great practical help to any presenter (FKA, n.d.).

Capturing audience attention is relatively straightforward in this scenario, since quarterly sales information is of direct interest to stockholders, managers, and salespeople who rely on that data. The greater challenge lies in sustaining that interest throughout the presentation — a goal commonly referred to as audience retention.

Addressing Audience Diversity

Even when the subject matter is inherently interesting to the audience, points of disjunction among audience members can still arise. Quarterly sales information, for example, may not carry the same importance for a customer as it does for a manager or salesperson. At the outset, there may be differences in the objectives and the degree to which various audience members find the information useful. In addition, inherent demographic differences must also be accounted for.

The most effective way to address audience diversity is to manage it, since demographic differences cannot be controlled. Central to managing audience diversity is knowing your audience. By acknowledging that different audience members may have different objectives for attending the presentation, the presenter can craft materials that are relevant to their varying needs. As Ivey (n.d.) explains: "By analyzing audience data we can establish the framework for strong and relevant presentation content. We should now have a good idea of the particular interests of our audience, their requisite needs, their dislikes, and their primary drivers. With this information we can incorporate topical elements into the presentation's content" (para. 5).

Conclusion

This paper discussed the importance of identifying audience characteristics and managing audience diversity to achieve audience retention in order to ensure effective message delivery. The importance of sensory contact with the audience was also noted, along with how tools such as visual aids and handouts support message delivery. Verbal and non-verbal modes of communication were identified as integral to communicating one's message more effectively.