Understanding Your Target Audience

Presentation Skills Resources, Resources

Define Who You Are Talking to for a memorable and compelling presentation

Here is what we will cover:

The 2 Key Areas to Review 

Building a Target Audience and Goals Profile

A B2C Target Audience

A B2B Target Audience

Presentations for Networking

Defining your Business Goal

The 2 Key Areas to Review

Before you start planning the material for any presentation, it is important to learn how to easily and effectively define your Target Audience and the goal of the presentation.

This will ensure that you are creating compelling material that your audience, ones that can relate to or are interested in, and therefore make you memorable.

The 2 key areas to review are:

  1. Your Target Audience
  2. Your Business Goal for that Target Audience

Building a Target Audience and Goals Profile

The first thing to determine is what type of target audience you are focused.

B2B, or B2C – business-to-business or business-to-consumer?

How you approach a B2B or a B2C audience will be different, so it is important to define now which group you will be focusing on in this scenario.

With this chosen, you will answer one of two sets of questions:

A B2C Target Audience

With B2C, you must consider different personal factors:

  • How old are your customers?
  • Are they mostly male or female?
  • Where do they live?
  • How much do they earn?
  • What is their profession?

A B2B Target Audience

With B2B, the things you must consider are oriented around the types of businesses you are talking to.

 

  • Are these businesses solo, small or large businesses?
  • What types of industry or business are they?

Presentations for Networking

If this is for a Presentation or Networking answer the question:

  • Who is in the Audience or at the event? B2B or B2C?

If this is for an internal business presentation answer the question:

  • Who is in the audience for your presentation?

To help you answer these questions well, consider your core products and services, and identify who is most likely to use them.

 Try to be as objective and specific as possible when answering each question.

Define your Business Goal

Finish by looking at your business goals for this Target Audience definition.

 Answer the question by choosing from the following ideas:

  • Client Acquisition
  • Product Training
  • Selling a New Idea
  • Presenting Insight into The Company Ideals and Ideas
  • Raise Personal Profile
  • Raise Company Profile
  • Create your own goal 

You have now defined one Target Audience with a matching Business Goal.

 You can go further and work on different versions as many times as you like, creating a version of the worksheet for each new presentation that you build depending on your objective.

Let’s explore this idea a bit more:

One Target Audience and Business Goals worksheet that you create might be done because you have been invited to present your business at your Local Business group meeting.

  • This is a B2B audience who is perhaps interested in learning about your business and your success stories as well as the challenges you faced and how you overcame them.
  • Your business Goal for this Audience might be business growth by building awareness and profile within the local business community.

A second version might be done for a sales presentation. This could break down as follows:

  • Your audience is B2B
  • Your goal is Client Acquisition

A third version may be a product presentation at a consumer event. This might breakdown as follows:

  • Your audience is B2C
  • Female, Busy Professionals, 25 – 45, comfortable making online purchases, Serious about Personal Health
  • Your goal is to Raise Company Profile and Client Acquisition 

There are many more scenarios that might be possible but having a clear objective will help you build the right material for greater success.

Keep this tool handy as a reference for later use as you build out your business story for different Audiences.