Audience Adaptation

The process of customizing your message to fit a specific audience. Audience adaptation is not merely saying what you think your listeners want to hear; rather, it is saying what your listeners need to hear in order to pay attention to you.

 The principles that guide a speaker or writer's choice of rhetorical strategies for dealing effectively with an audience.

Important factors
"A number of factors influence the make-up and disposition of any given audience and, therefore, determine what will be appropriate to say:

1. - Situation. What motivates the audience to listen to the speaker? What outcomes do they want or expect?

2. - Context: What is the broader context of the speaking situation? 3. - Demographics: What are the characteristics of the audience in terms of age, gender, race, religion, ethnic background, political affiliation, and socioeconomic status?

4. - Ideology: What beliefs, worldviews, and emotional investments does the audience bring to the situation?
5.

- Homogeneity/Heterogeneity: How similar/dissimilar are most members of the audience?

7. - Occasion:

What expectations are there for the speech, given the occasion? (For example, a eulogy and a political debate generate different expectations.)

8. - Need: What reason for speaking is the speaker adapting to? (This might include the public recognition of a problem.)