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3 Examples of Audience Analysis

John Spacey, January 23, 2020

Audience analysis is the process of identifying the characteristics of a target audience. This is done to tailor communications to be persuasive, informational or to optimize for a particular goal such as closing sales. The following are illustrative examples of an audience analysis.

Public Speaking

Audience analysis may be conducted as part of crafting a presentation or speech. This is as specific to your topic and goals as possible. It may capture elements of your audience's demographics, knowledge, interests, disinterests, needs and expectations.

The environment field captures the political atmosphere that surrounds your communication. The likely objections field captures challenges that you can reasonably expect based on your planned message.

Public Relations

Public relations is the process of communicating to stakeholders such as investors, regulators, employees, customers and communities. These may all be viewed as separate target audiences for the same message. For example, a communication about an acquisition might require a separate audience analysis for investors and regulators as these two audiences receive the same message but have completely different viewpoints.

Marketing

Marketing communications such as advertising, promotions, events, press releases and informational content may involve separate messages tailored for different target audiences. For example, a car manufacturer may market the same car to young families and retirees with different commercials placed in different media designed to reach these target audiences.

Audience vs Target Audience

An audience is all the people that you reach with a message. A target audience are a group of people that are considered for tailoring or targeting a message. For example, an investment banking conference may attract people from a wide variety of professions such as technologists, bankers, salespeople and administrators. This is an audience. A keynote speaker at this conference may only consider equity traders as their target audience such that they tailor their talk to a small percentage of the total audience.

Target Audience vs Target Market

A target audience is the set of people you hope to reach with a message. A target market is the set of people you hope to make customers. There is a difference. For example, a beverage company may view the entire population of a nation as their target market for a popular product but may develop hundreds of different target audiences such as snowboarders or grandmothers to promote sales.

Overview: Audience Analysis
Type	Communication Plan
Definition	The process of identifying the characteristics of a target audience.
Related Concepts	Communication Plan » Target Audience » Demographics » Anticipating Objections » Public Relations » Stakeholders »