National EMSC Data Analysis Resource Center
National EMSC Data Analysis Resource Center
By understanding our audience’s needs, we will be able to better communicate with them.
Before you even think about different communication methods, stop and fully explore who your target audience is and what their needs are.
Using our running scenario we began in Step 1 , let’s say we’ve identified our primary message as being the need for improved pediatric training.
Our primary target audience we identified in Step 2 is EMS training leadership, including the EMS director, EMS advisory board members, pediatric task force members, training managers, trainers, and training colleagues. (We will leave off the other groups for now for simplicity).
What do you know about your target audience? Who are they? What are their backgrounds? What does their day consist of? What are their needs? How much detail would they want? How much data would they want? How is it easiest to communicate with them? What do they care about most?
All of these questions are important to consider. You may have to unfairly lump people together to answer these questions, but this is okay as long as it helps you understand your audience a little more as a whole. Let’s think about these questions for our EMS training leadership group. Here are some of the thoughts I came up with for this group:
While these answers may not reflect the needs of each individual member of our target audience, they do help us get a better feel for who the audience is as a whole. By understanding our audience’s needs, we will be able to better communicate with them. You would want to create a similar list of characteristics for each of the other target audiences you identified in Step 2.
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rev. 05-Aug-2019
