Understanding your Audience

It is very important to know that all communication efforts in an organization are not geared to the same audience. Understanding who your audience is complements your strategic communications efforts and achieves the intended results. In internal communications, for example, some messaging can be tailored to the management team and others to new hires or memos for all staff. The audience in both scenarios has a very wide difference regardless of the fact that they both work in the same work environment. Communications can be carried out for issues management, crisis management, marketing or brand awareness and the audience for each would differ based on interest.

In marketing communications for example, there may be a need to segment the audience based on knowledge of the product and perspective of it. Someone who has had no experience using a particular product needs more marketing communications effort to generate their interest before the business or organization can achieve its goal of making sales. When this is not taken into consideration, the messaging will be tailored alike for both segments and will not achieve the business objectives.

Each communication effort’s content, language, and tone vary based on the audience your message is directed at. Drafting an activity report or update to the management in the same way you write to inform new hires of the company’s policy can be a very costly mistake to make in communicating. Thus, strategic communications is a broad concept that also cuts across drafting a message, identifying and understanding your target audience (amongst other areas) to be purposeful and intentional with communications.

A common mistake made by business and political leaders is to make assumptions about their audience. They do not take the time to research to find out who they are and what they should be saying to them. Effective communications starts with good audience analysis.
~Sola Abulu

Another costly mistake a communications professional can make is taking your audience for granted. This is very common in external communications where message is delivered to an audience you know little or nothing about. Before disseminating any information, the priority should be that you understand the business or organizational needs at that given time and that the communications align with the overall business strategy. The next thing to do is to carry out an audience analysis that helps you realize their peculiarities. This analysis will answer questions like, what are their interests, what is their demography (age grade, professional status, location, etc.).

Understanding their demography will determine if they are millennials or Generation Z. When the organization or business launches a product for corporate millennials, it is wrong audience targeting to plan communications campaigns for it on platforms like Tiktok and Instagram because the target audience of such campaigns populates platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook. Understanding your audience is crucial to knowing the kind of messages that resonate with them and the kind that can be offensive to avoid. This can prevent crisis scenarios. Watch this video by Sola Abulu, our Principal Consultant on Managing Crisis Communication: Knowing How to Communicate in a Crisis.

The most impactful type of communication is that which is strategic. It is about being purposeful and not making assumption about who you are talking to and how the message is received.
~Sola Abulu.

If communication is defined as strategic when it is purposeful, achieves the intended meaning and supports the overall business strategy, then your knowledge and understanding of the audience is how you can get results. Our article on How to Identify Your Target Audience explains targeting, segmenting, messaging and channels clearly. You can catch up here.

For business/organizational leaders looking to learn the frameworks of strategic communications, our training arm is running the 4th virtual cohort of our Strategic Communications course this September. Register your interest here. Enrolment ends by midnight on Sept 24, 2024.
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Sola Abulu & Associates is a strategy and communications consulting and training firm committed to enabling businesses, brands and organizations to achieve their objectives through strategic communications, organizational effectiveness and reputation risk management

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