Audience Analysis Worksheet [Free PDF Download]

Reading about audience analysis and talking about audience analysis is great… in theory.

But it’s much better if you are doing audience analysis, instead.

To help you make audience analysis a positive habit, I’m sharing a free audience analysis worksheet.

Audience Analysis Worksheet

Go for it… download a copy of this free audience analysis worksheet (PDF).

Why use a worksheet?

I’m a big believer in worksheets, templates, check lists, cheat sheets, etc. I use them professionally and personally for many tasks, including speech preparation. Worksheets help focus your energy and make a seemingly complex task simple to perform.

Here’s why I like this audience analysis worksheet:

• It’s short.
  Just a single page, double-sided.
• It includes a brief overview of the three primary dimensions: demographic, psychological, and contextual.
• It prompts you to probe into 28 common criteria to ask about your audience.
• For each question (given in the left column), you simply fill in:
  • A brief analysis of your audience (middle column), and
  • Tweaks you can make to your presentation to better align with your audience. These are practical actions that you can take to improve some aspect of your speech. (right column)

For example, you might fill in the first couple rows like this:

Note: Use “n/a” if you don’t feel that this particular criteria impacts your presentation.

Using and Sharing the Worksheet

I hope this worksheet helps you perform audience analysis for every presentation that you give. Once you make it a habit, you will find that your presentations will have greater impact with your audiences.

Feel free to share it with your friends and colleagues. Print copies and pass them around if you like.

As always, let me know if this resource can be made even more useful for you. Share your ideas in the comments.