The art of public speaking, whether it’s a campaign speech, a sermon, a marketing pitch, or a classroom lesson, depends as much on the listeners as it does the speaker.
The most skilled, confident keynote speaker with a silken voice can be a dismal failure if the speaker’s remarks are not matched to the identity of the audience.
Effective presenters focus as much energy on the identity of their listeners as they do on preparing their remarks. Having empathy and being able to put yourself in the audiences shoes is going to be critical if you want to become a keynote speaker.
As the saying goes, “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” which means that the audience, in the end, is going to determine how successful your speech is.
One simple public speaking tip that is recommended by most professionals is to conduct an audience identity analysis.
Demographics
Persuasive public speaking requires that the presenter know as precisely as possible the identities of individuals expected to be in the audience.
That doesn’t mean that a presenter needs to know the listeners personally. But it does mean that the presenter have a clear idea of the makeup of the audience, especially if the group is quite large.
In advertising, before a campaign is launched to market a product or service, the marketing team will conduct research into what is called “demographics” – the study of a group of people based upon their age, gender, education, and race.
They do this because they want to know how to craft their message so that it connects with their target audience, which is exactly what you should be doing.
Below are a few examples of a how public speaking skills can be shaped based on select factors of audience identity.
Education
A presenter readying remarks to an audience of mostly Ph.D.’s might choose a language style, a vocabulary, and examples that will be readily understood and respected by listeners who have advanced degrees.
The same speaker preparing for a group of high school grads will select a different vocabulary, a more casual, less academic style, and use examples that would resonate more with less educated listeners.
Therefore, how you speak and what you talk about (especially references), can greatly depend on the audiences education.
Age
A speaker presenting to a group of senior citizens will be able to make references to cultural and historical factoids that go back many decades, references that would only bewilder a much younger audience.
However, the speaker may adopt a louder than usual speaking style and use shorter sentences if the audience consists of many hard of hearing seniors. Visuals will need to be bright and large and easy to interpret visually.
Whereas if you are speaking to a group of young adults, you will want to make sure that what you are saying is direct and to the point because their attention spans are much shorter.
Gender
In a presentation to an audience of middle-aged male engineers, a speaker might use a number of sports analogies and be reasonably sure most listeners will understand them.
The same speaker presenting to an audience of female marketing specialists in their 30’s might opt for fewer sports analogies and use business analogies instead.
That doesn’t mean that women are not interested in sports or that middle-aged engineers don’t understand business.
The presenter is simply trying to improve his/her public speaking skills by shaping language to the largest identity segment of listeners.
Race
Identity is a key factor in contemporary American life. There is “identity politics” and people are worried about “identify theft.”
With various ethnic, religious, and cultural identities sparring from dominance in American culture, presenters need to be sensitive as never before to the code words that can inflame listeners’ emotions and sink a presentation.
Even Canadians, for example, nearly all of whom speak English, are sometimes irritated when speakers from the United States refer to the U.S. as “America” since Canadians also see themselves as “Americans,” that is, residents of North America.
In today’s global arena, a speaker can expect to have audience members whose native language is not English.
If they constitute a sizable portion of the listening audience, the speaker may opt for a less sophisticated vocabulary and less dependence on U.S. idioms.
Cultural or topical references and examples will need to be more global than national or regional.
Psychographics
If you truly want to to get inside the mind of the audience you are speaking to, then you will want to understand their psychographics – the study of a group of people’s lifestyle choices, attitudes, and aspirations.
When you think of a presidential campaign, this is exactly what they are doing before they even begin the campaign. They conduct polls and market research to understand the hopes, fears, and dreams of the voters, and then focus on those talking points during their speeches.
This is why we hear the same rhetoric from our candidates:
- “I’m going to fix our economy”
- “I’m going to create more jobs”
- “I’m going to provide healthcare for all”
They repeat these messages because they know it’s what most people want to hear.
So as a professional speaker, it is your job to understand the hopes, dreams, and fears of your audience so you can script your speech to address those issues.
- What problems do they have?
- What do they want to accomplish?
- What are their deepest fears?
Ask yourself these questions before you write your speech.
Pre-Knowledge
Another key factor in an audience identity analysis is the extent of listeners’ pre-knowledge.
- What do the listeners know about the subject?
- How much background (technical or otherwise) will a speaker have to provide the listeners?
By way of example, an insurance agent has only twenty minutes to present an informative lecture on how telemedicine is reducing health care costs.
That speaker’s effectiveness will hinge on his knowing beforehand that over one third of his audience is unfamiliar with telemedicine and needs a 5-7 minute tutorial as an introduction.
Doing a simple audience identity analysis doesn’t take a public speaker much time and it doesn’t have to be very complicated–though in high value speaking situations it should be.
Any public speaker who knows as much as possible about the identity of audience members beforehand will be better prepared to communicate effectively with them and less likely to avoid losing their attention.
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