Understand Your Audience

Now you might be asked by your boss, your 0:00 manager, or your team to deliver a talk about something. 0:03 It all happens to, to us every once in a while. 0:07 Now maybe it's a progress report of some kind, or you're outlining a 0:10 project that you are working on or maybe you want to work on. 0:15 Now, regardless of how you decide to 0:19 deliver this information, you generally know three things. 0:22 You know how much time you have to prepare your talk, 0:25 whether it's tomorrow or next week, or a few months from now. 0:29 You know how long your presentation should be, whether 0:34 you've got five minutes to give this talk, 20. 0:36 You know, you're gonna be key noting or an hour. 0:39 And the third thing is you should have a pretty good 0:44 idea of who your audience will be, and its this third 0:46 point that is key. 0:51 Understanding who your audience is needs to be a huge part of your preparation. 0:53 If you can tailor your presentation to fit the experience level and 0:58 the interest of your audience, they're going to retain so much more. 1:04 They're gonna get so much value out of it. 1:08 And in the end, they'll be more apt 1:10 to take action, whatever action you present there. 1:12 Now as I was preparing this presentation, I wanted to reach out to 1:17 some people that have given lots of talks on their on their own. 1:19 Whether it's you know, with their different teams or on stage. 1:25 So I reached out to some friend of mine on Twitter to get their advice. 1:29 One of the first people I heard back from is Aleyda Solis. 1:33 Aleyda is Head of Digital Strategy at WooRank, and the one tip that 1:37 she wanted to share with people giving presentations is to know your audience, 1:42 and shape your presentation accordingly to make it useful and actionable to them. 1:48 Also, leverage storytelling. 1:54 Now basically, this echoes that first point that I made. 1:56 If your presentation isn't relevant to the audience, it's not going to be effective. 1:59 Now, let's take a, a real 2:05 business scenario where preparation like this becomes a real factor. 2:07 So, say you're a freelancer and a friend of yours 2:11 tells you about a local business that needs a new site. 2:14 I mean their, you, you look at their site and it's woefully out of date. 2:17 And you know that you can do so much better, and I think this 2:21 is kind of a classic example for a lot of devs and developers out there. 2:23 All right, so you decide to approach them. Right. 2:27 So I'm gonna pick on 2:30 a local business here which I actually love, no disrespect to the 2:32 Beefy King, but here in Orlando the Beefy King website is not responsive. 2:36 The images and the usability could be improved, maybe. 2:41 You know, they can add some nice features like an online ordering app. 2:46 That might be something that they could use 2:50 that I know maybe some other restaurants have. 2:53 Now, the mistake that some freelancers 2:56 make, if they wanna approach a business like 2:57 this, is to fire off a general boiler plate. 3:00 Sort of pitch. 3:04 Where they talk about who they are, maybe a couple of the skills they have. 3:05 And then they, you know, they leave it with, 3:09 you know, contact for, contact us for a quote. 3:11 This isn't all that compelling. 3:15 Alright, you're, what you're really doing is taking this 3:16 sort of lean back approach and you're relying on 3:20 the potential client to put all the pieces together. 3:23 To come to the same conclusion that you did. 3:27 Right? 3:30 That they need a new site, and that you're well suited to it. 3:31 You know, don't make them do all the work here, all right. 3:35 If you know your audience and of course you know, here they are on their website. 3:40 Why settle for a generic pitch when you can tailor something specifically 3:45 for them. Okay. 3:49 Research your audience and identify their needs. 3:51 These are two key points that I wanna 3:54 make about preparation of any presentation or pitch. 3:56 Research the potential client. 4:01 Check out their website. 4:04 You know, take a look at everything on there. 4:05 And then take a look at their industry. 4:08 Look at their competitors. 4:10 See what their competitors have on their websites. 4:11 What features they have, what content. Stuff like that, right? 4:15 And then speak to some of the needs that 4:18 you identify within the pitch that you send them. 4:21 So, You know, you may do your research and you may discover that 4:26 the customer at the Beefy King don't 4:30 necessarily care about an online ordering app. 4:33 You know, it's an idea you had. 4:36 It was worth pursuing, but you know, unless it's 4:37 safe for catering and large parties or 4:40 events, these guy don't specifically need it. 4:42 But what they really want when they hit the 4:45 site, I'm talking about potential customers here for them, is 4:48 you know, if they are on a mobile device 4:52 say, is they want quick access to location information, right? 4:53 So, maybe putting the map in the location on the 4:57 home page is better than burying it within the site. 5:01 This could be a conclusion that you 5:05 come to because you understand the potential client. 5:06 And by understanding the audience, you know, and 5:11 the, their needs, you can better plan your approach. 5:14 The same type of approach could be used during a job search. 5:18 You know, you don't wanna send a generic cover letter 5:22 to everyone, to every company, about every opening that's out there. 5:25 You should be customizing 5:29 it based on the job description. Their company, website, and so on. 5:30 You know, another example, here on Authentic Jobs. 5:35 They have a job opening from Charity Water. 5:39 And there's a lot of detail in 5:42 it, especially this section here, the must-haves. 5:43 Right, you can see point by point what 5:47 kind of skills they're looking for in an applicant. 5:49 They, they just, they're spelled out for you right here. 5:53 These are their needs. And this is fantastic. 5:55 If only you knew. 5:58 If only all potential clients put out their, what their 5:59 must-haves are, what their needs were, this would be amazing, right? 6:03 So when you pitch them you know, if you're going for this job, for 6:06 example, on your qualifications, you don't ignore 6:10 this stuff, especially when it's labeled must-haves, right? 6:13 So refer to this or address it in some way so 6:16 that they realize that you understand their needs. 6:20 So, are client pitches and job applications 6:24 over email necessarily presentations in the classic sense? 6:29 Not really, but the principles are very much the same. 6:33 Knowing you audience, who they are, what they're interested 6:37 in, is extremely important in this process of preparing something. 6:40 Otherwise the presentation is not going to resonate. 6:46 It won't be as effective. 6:49 And you won't get as many people to do what you want them to do. 6:50