NOTE: Today’s memo on developing deep knowledge about our audiences is the last memo of the year. Hope everyone enjoys the holidays with loved ones. See you again in early January.
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Knowing your material inside out is essential to persuasive communication. But it’s not enough. It’s also crucial to have deep knowledge of your audience.
Why? Because it’s hard – perhaps impossible – to communicate persuasively if you don’t have a solid grasp on who you’re talking to. That’s true whether you’re writing a speech, a New York Times op-ed, or a year-end fundraising appeal.
In today’s memo, let’s discuss what it would be important to know about the people we’re trying to persuade – and how we might gain that understanding.
When editors or account teams provide a creative brief, it hopefully supplies writers and designers with adequate information about the message’s content. But it’s just as crucial to make sure creatives have a clear picture of the people who will receive the message.
If you’re a writer or designer and don’t have that kind of information, ask for it, pursue it. Make clear you can’t do an effective job without it.
Writers and communications strategists can become jaded over time. They can develop a cynical attitude about their craft including unhelpful caricatures of their audience. Resist that temptation with all your might.
Thinking of the people you’re trying to persuade as one-dimensional figures you need to manipulate or unsophisticated people you have to “dumb down” your message for is just wrong. It’s also a path to weaker connections and lower responses.
Of course, one path to a clearer fix on your audience is data. And the sophistication with which analytics teams are able to pinpoint audience variations and opportunities keeps growing by leaps and bounds.
These powerful tools use sophisticated modeling of demographic, psychographic and behavioral information to pinpoint messaging segments. But they are far less effective when it comes to understanding the emotional journey people are on. So, by all means, start with data, but don’t stop there.
A deeper understanding of your audience involves getting a firmer grasp on their emotional journey. What makes them tick? What keeps them up at night? What touches their heart? What drives them crazy?
It’s not just about the specific topic of your message. It’s about the broader emotional context in which that message will land. The more you know about the emotional journey of the people you’re trying to reach, the deeper the connection you will be able to forge.
One device I have found useful in forging an emotional connection is working to imagine a day in the life of the person I’m trying to persuade. If it’s someone like you, that’s an easier task. You can draw on your own experience and the rhythm of your own life. But connecting with audiences distant from your experience requires more effort and more empathy.
Take the much-discussed post-election topic of the Democratic disconnect with working class voters. Have too many Democratic candidate and communicators lost the ability to understand and empathize with families living in constant economic uncertainty? Are those communicators falling back on one dimensional caricatures of working-class people?
I believe that’s happening with some regularity. And, if I’m right, is there any wonder why the disconnect is deepening?
Want to know one of the easiest ways to connect with someone? Use language and turns of phrase familiar and comfortable to that person. And the quickest way to create distance is to express yourself with words and figures of speech that ring false.
I’ll talk in a minute about how focus group research can help enhance our audience understanding. But one critical value of such research is hearing firsthand the language people use. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been behind the mirror at a research facility and heard myself say “Ah, that’s a much better way to say that.”
You can gain similar understanding in other listening opportunities – from what you hear in donor meetings to what canvassers report from their on-the-street conversations.
I began my career as a political campaign strategist using polling to clarify audiences and target messaging. A decade later, when I entered the nonprofit communications space, I brought with me knowledge of the role research can play as one powerful input in understanding peoples’ attitudes and motivations.
It’s particularly helpful in exposing what you might call barriers to connection. For example, people might not see an organization as the right vehicle for acting on a given issue. Or their desire for immediate impact might be running into a group’s focus on long-term strategies.
Another useful analytical device is to compare the responses of people who took a certain action and those who elected not to. Where the two audiences vary can expose barriers you can seek to address.
But here’s one big thing survey research can’t really tell you. It can’t expose the direct reasons why a person donated, lobbied or voted in a certain way. Here’s why: Most of those decisions are made in an instinctive, emotional way.
People then develop an after-the-fact logical rationale for what they did. Ask them direct questions about their choices and you’ll hear about that rationale not the actual emotional basis for their decision.
Quantitative research provides statistically valid data about your audiences’ attitudes, opinions and motivations. By contrast, focus groups provide impressionistic insights that aren’t statistically valid, but can be quite revealing.
Both forms of research are best used as just one stream of information to be taken into account alongside others including message testing and common-sense observations.
Here’s one concrete example. When I first worked with Oxfam America, my instinct was to try to warm up what seemed to be a distant, arm’s length relationship between Oxfam and its supporters. But focus groups revealed a different dynamic. The distance we sensed was a sign of respect not indifference. People put Oxfam — a thoughtful, deeply committed organization – on a pedestal. The distance was a productive feature of a unique relationship, not a troubling one.
Without focus groups, we might never have deciphered that.
It’s always easier to write to a person as opposed to a messaging segment. Earlier in my career I devoted a lot of energy to helping the Democratic party message about threats to Social Security. Making sure I had the right profile in mind was easy. I wrote to my mother and father, thinking hard about what would touch their hearts and what wouldn’t make any sense to them.
So whether it’s someone in your life, a character from TV, movies or literature, or a person you’ve had to conjure up from whole cloth, try to have an individual in mind when you craft your message.
Today we’ve discussed the two basic principles behind persuasive communications – knowing your material and knowing your audience. I’ll close with one more exercise that may help on the audience front.
Strengthen your audience knowledge by trying to answer these two questions:
What’s the most dependable way to make a connection with your audience?
And what’s the easiest way to lose connection?
Those answers will help guide you toward the most persuasive message available. And will help you avoid the most dangerous pitfalls.
But whatever you do, don’t forget that persuasion depends not only on knowing what you want to say, but also on knowing who you’re talking to.
