1. Business Communication
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2. AUDIENCE STRATEGY

3. Who are they?
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4. 1. Who are they? A. Primary Audience. B. Key Influencers.
C. Secondary Audiences.

5. Who are they? A. Primary Audience Message Directly
1. Audience is unknown
2. Audience is familiar

6. When your audience is unknown, find out about their
(1) Demographics (age, education, organization or department, geographic location, organizational rank, and language fluency)
(2) knowledge and beliefs (their background or values)
(3) preferences, (level of formality, preferred channel choice: e.g., versus face-to-face.

7. When your audience is familiar, your job will be easier, but nevertheless, take the time to analyze them. Keep in mind not only their demographics, knowledge, and channel preference but also their likes and dislikes, typical behavior.

8. Communication Objective
B. Key Influencers.
Communication Objective
Usually one or more audience members have
more control over the outcome of the communication (that is, your communication objective).

9. 1. Decision-makers (your client or customer, make the decision directly.
2. Opinion leaders.
3. Gatekeepers (your boss or an assistant,
have the ability to either expedite or block your message).

10. Message Indirectly
C. Secondary Audiences
1. Colleagues or clients who may be in cc’d
2. Bosses who may need to approve communications
in advance
3. Employees who have the power to undercut your
message later
4. Assistants and intermediaries

11. In addition, think about how your audience members may
communicate with one another or others; they may forward your or slide, text or tweet during your presentation, comment about your report or other document on a blog or website, or post something you’ve written on Facebook.

12. 2. What do they know and expect?
Age
Ethnic Origin
Occupation
Gender
Source:
Culture
Education

13. What do they know and expect?
Deal with mix backgrounds needs
Identify and define the jargon
Simplify the information
Consider their format expectations
Visual
Formality

14. What do they know and expect?
Address second-language issues
Check the use of idioms and metaphors.
Avoid sarcasm and be careful with humor.

15. 3. What do they feel? What emotions do they feel?
How interested are they in your message?
What is their probable attittude?

16. What will persuade them?
Persuade the audience with benefits.
Tangible benefits.
Career or task benefits.
Ego benefits.
Personality benefits.
Group benefits.
Consistency benefits.

17. • Tangible benefits:
Monetary benefits such as a bonus. It helps productivity process and personnel.
Other tangible benefits may be more symbolic (such as offices, furnishings, or even just a pen or a mug).

18. Career or task benefits:
Emphasize their career advancement or prestige (such as organizational recognition or reputation enhancement).

19. Ego benefits: Enhance their sense of self-worth, accomplishment, and achievement, with formal statements, informal praises, or nonverbal nods or perhaps even hand slaps.

20. Personality benefits: Different personalities are persuaded differently.
For example, persuade thinkers with lots of data, skeptics with lots of credibility, unemotional people with rationality, and emotional people with enthusiasm and energy.

21. Group benefits: emphasizes the benefits to the group as a whole; group consensus over individual preferences;
group comparisons, such as benchmarking or “bandwagon” (“everyone else is doing it”).

22. Consistency benefits: People want to be seen as consistent; so if you can get them to say something publicly or in writing, they will tend to support that idea—in order to be consistent with what they’ve said.