Analyzing Your Purpose and Audience

For a business message to be effective, its purpose and its audience must complement one another. You must know enough about your purpose and audience to shape your message in a way that serves both. So you begin planning your message by being as specific as you can about the purpose of your message. Then you analyze your audience as thoroughly as possible.

When planning a business message, you must decide on the general and specific purpose of the message. All business messages have a general purpose: to inform, to persuade, or to collaborate with your audience. This overall purpose determines both the amount of audience participation you need and the amount of control you have over your message. To inform your audience, you need little interaction. Audience members absorb the information and accept or reject it, but they don't contribute to message content; you control the message. To persuade your audience, you require a moderate amount of participation, and you need to retain a moderate amount of message control. Finally, to collaborate with audience members, you need maximum participation. Your control of the message is minimal because you must adjust to new input and unexpected reactions.

Business messages also have a specific purpose. That purpose may be clear and straightforward (such as placing an order) or it may be more encompassing (such as convincing management to hire more part-time employees during the holiday season). To help you define the specific purpose of your message, ask yourself what your audience should do or think after receiving your message. Then state your specific purpose as precisely as possible, even identifying which audience members should respond.

You must also consider whether your purpose is worth pursuing at this time. Too many business messages serve no practical purpose, and writing useless memos can destroy your credibility, your believability—based on how reliable you are and how much trust you evoke in others. If you suspect that your ideas will have little impact, wait until you have a more practical purpose. To help you decide whether to proceed, ask yourself four questions:

•	Is your purpose realistic? If your purpose involves a radical shift in action or attitude, go slowly. Consider proposing the first step and viewing your message as the beginning of a learning process.

•	Is this the right time? If an organization is undergoing changes of some sort, you may want to defer your message until things stabilize and people can concentrate on your ideas.

•	Is the right person delivering your message? Even though you may have done all the work, achieving your objective is more important than taking the credit. You may want to play a supporting role in delivering your message if, for example, your boss's higher status could get better results.

•	Is your purpose acceptable to your organization? If you receive an abusive letter that unfairly attacks your company, you might wish to fire back an angry reply. But your supervisors might prefer that you regain the customer's goodwill. Your response must reflect the organization's priorities.

Once you are satisfied that you have a legitimate purpose in communicating, you must take a good look at your intended audience.

Who are your audience members? What are their attitudes? What do they need to know? And why should they care? The answers to such questions will indicate which material you'll need to cover and how to cover it.

If you're communicating with someone you know well, perhaps your boss or a co-worker, audience analysis is relatively easy. You can predict this person's reaction pretty well, without a lot of research. On the other hand, your audience could be made up of strangers—customers or suppliers you've never met, a new boss, or new employees. So just like Home Depot's Marcus and Blank, you'll have to learn about the members of your audience before you can adjust your message to serve them (see Figure 4–2).

Active Figure 4–2	Audience Analysis Helps You Plan Your Message

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Identify the primary audience. If you can reach the decision makers or opinion molders in your audience, other audience members will fall into place. Key people ordinarily have the most organizational clout, but occasionally a person of relatively low status may have influence in one or two particular areas.

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Determine audience size. A report for wide distribution requires a more formal style, organization, and format than one directed to three or four people in your department. Also, be sure to respond to the particular concerns of key individuals. The head of marketing would need different facts than the head of production or finance would need.

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Determine audience composition. Look for common denominators that tie audience members together across differences in culture, education, status, or attitude. Include evidence that touches on everyone's area of interest. To be understood across cultural barriers, consider how audience members think and learn, as well as what style they expect.4

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Gauge your audience's level of understanding. If audience members share your general background, they'll understand your material without difficulty. If not, you must educate them. But deciding how much information to include can be a challenge. As a guideline, include only enough information to accomplish your objective. Everything else is irrelevant and must be eliminated; otherwise it will overwhelm your audience and divert attention from the important points. If audience members do not have the same level of understanding, gear your coverage to your primary audience (the key decision makers).

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Estimate your audience's probable reaction. Chapter 5 discusses how audience reaction affects message organization. If you expect a favorable response, you can state conclusions and recommendations up front and with less evidence. If you expect skepticism, you can introduce conclusions gradually, with more proof. By anticipating the primary audience's response to certain points, you can include evidence to address those issues.