Speaking to a Mixed Audience: What Should You Focus On?

Addressing a mixed audience brings an added layer of complexity to public speaking.

When faced with an audience with varying levels of knowledge, different interests, and diverse perspectives on the topic, it can be confusing to know what (or who) to focus on.

If you start too basic, the experts tune out. If you get too technical, the beginners drift off.

Is there a way to craft a message that resonates with everyone in the room?

Earlier, we explored how to conduct an audience analysis — a crucial first step in understanding who you’re speaking to. Now, we’re taking it a step further: what to do when your audience is mixed?

Below, I share how to segment your mixed audience into several sub-groups, and ultimately identify who to actually focus on during your presentation.

What is a Mixed Audience in Public Speaking?

A mixed audience is a group of listeners that vary in background, experience, profession, culture, age, or knowledge levels.

This diversity presents both a challenge and an opportunity.

The challenge: What resonates with one audience segment may not land the same way with another.

The opportunity: Although seemingly diverse, the different sub-groups in the audience have something in common that has brought them together.

Real-Life Examples of Mixed Audience Presentations

Here are a few examples of scenarios where one might speak to a mixed audience:

Company-wide or multi-team meetings: In annual meetings, top-level leaders address staff from different departments such as marketing, accounting, customer support sales, etc. Each group has varying knowledge levels, interests, and priorities related to their work.

Conference presentations: When delivering a conference presentation, the audience may include industry experts, students, lecturers, business executives, and so on. Some attendees have deep technical expertise on the topic while many others seek broad ‘big-picture’ insights on the topic.

Product launch presentations: Introducing a new product into the market by way of a product launch presentation can attract a mixed audience (both in-person and virtual). Those in the audience can include potential customers, media representatives, technical experts, and social media influencers. These different sub-sections of the audience will have varying expectations and interest levels.

A popular example of this scenario is the Apple iPhone launch which paved the way for similar tech product launches.

Audience Analysis for a Mixed Audience: What to Focus On?

We’re all familiar with this public speaking rule: If you’re speaking to everybody, then you’re speaking to nobody.

Well, then the most important consideration for addressing a mixed audience is, ‘What should I focus on?’

We’ll determine what you need to focus on, along with how to tailor your presentation for a mixed audience, in three steps:

Step 1: Set clear success metrics for your presentation
Step 2: Segment your audience and identify sub-groups
Step 3: Proceed to address the ‘high priority’ group

Step 1: Set clear success metrics for your presentation

Ask yourself: What does success look like at the end of your presentation?

Here are some examples of presentation success metrics:

• Capture leads for the business
• Spread awareness on a topic
• Get the committee to sign off on PhD thesis
• Attract customers
• Get promoted
• Get funded
• Impart knowledge

When you know what success looks like to you, it’s much easier to focus on that.

It doesn’t matter how diverse your audience is, if your primary presentation goal is to, say, attract customers, you now clearly know who you’re addressing in the presentation.

With that, let’s proceed to step 2.

Step 2: Segment your audience and identify sub-groups

When you find yourself facing a mixed audience, you will notice that there are generally three types of people in the audience:

Decision-makers: They directly affect your presentation’s success
Influencers: They indirectly affect your presentation’s success
Seat warmers: They don’t affect your presentation’s success

Step 3: Proceed to address the ‘priority’ group

After segmenting your audience into decision-makers, influencers, and seat warmers, you can easily identify which group is a ‘priority’ in the audience.

Now, perform the conventional audience analysis (demographics, psychographics, and situational analysis) on this priority group.

Your presentation content will need to match the knowledge levels and expectations of the decision-makers (and if applicable, the influencers).

FYI: I dig deeper into how to perform an audience analysis in public speaking in this article.

When Everyone in the Audience is Relevant: How to Engage Everyone In the Room

There are some instances where there isn’t a ‘priority’ group in the audience as everyone in the room is important and relevant.

In such scenarios, I apply this life lesson camouflaged as a communication tip: you can’t please everyone.

Below are a few handy tips to engage a mixed audience where everyone is deemed important:

Find common ground

Identify themes, stories, or ideas that unite the audience in front of you irrespective of their differences in demographics. Finding common ground and establishing that early in your presentation makes every audience member feel included and engaged.

Examples of finding common ground within a mixed audience:

Type of presentation	Audience common ground
Company-wide meeting	Continued success of the company and making a difference through one’s work
Conference keynote	Interest in the topic, its current application, and future potential
Product launch	Interest in innovation, user experience, tech specs, and features

Get everyone up to speed

During the introduction stage of your presentation, start broad, and then go deeper into the topic. This ensures that knowledge gaps are filled, and everyone is primed to receive the key points.

Use relatable examples or analogies

To illustrate a point in your presentation, pick an example that most of the audience can relate to. Using analogies is a powerful way to make complex or abstract concepts more digestible.

Additionally, you can include relatable anecdotes or stories as part of your presentation to connect with everyone on a more human level.

Have regular check-ins with the audience

At different points during the talk, pause and check on the audience. Are they following along? Do you see blank stares or confused faces? Feel free to have a mini Q&A session halfway through the presentation to address any knowledge gaps or unclear points.

Read the room and adapt on-the-spot

If you notice that people in the audience are starting to get disengaged (pulling out their phones or breaking eye contact for long periods of time) or distracted (looking elsewhere or being fidgety), it’s time to switch things up.

On-the-spot audience engagement tactics can be as simple as including a ‘raise your hand if…’ activity or asking an open-ended question to encourage audience members to participate.

Audience Analysis for a Mixed Audience: Concluding Thoughts

Speaking to and engaging a mixed audience is a critical skill for any public speaker. Whether you’re presenting at a company-wide meeting or speaking at an industry conference, your message needs to be clear and relevant to those in the audience.

In most situations, you’ll be able to identify the priority group in your audience and address them directly. In many other instances, you may need to uncover the common thread that connects everyone in your audience.

No matter what mixed audience scenario you find yourself in, dedicating a bit of time to put yourself in your audience’s shoes before your presentation can significantly improve your presentation outcome.

Recommended resources:

• Check out this comprehensive article on how to conduct an audience analysis in public speaking in 3 easy, logical steps
• Get my free ‘Audience Analysis Worksheet’ that contains question prompts and multiple-choice options to analyze your audience