Advertisers are shrewd analysts of people’s needs and wants, extensively researching our buying habits and lifestyle choices to identify what motivates us. To engage your listeners and encourage their involvement in your message, you too must investigate your audience. Audience analysis is the process of gathering and analyzing information about audience members’ attributes and motivations with the explicit aim of preparing your speech in ways that will be meaningful to them. This is the single most critical aspect of preparing for any speech.

Maintaining an audience-centered approach throughout the entire speech preparation process—from selection and treatment of the speech topic to making decisions about how you will organize, word, and deliver it—will help you prepare a presentation that your audience will want to hear.