Understanding Your Target Audience

In our fast-paced society, quantifying what your audience needs from your company or product can be easier said than done. A wide range of analytics software is at your disposal, and drawing a coherent conclusion can be quite the challenge.

The eLearning market can be especially difficult when trying to assess what your audience needs or wants. Learners will have various needs depending on the subject matter as well as their current level of knowledge. Your learning materials will need to be very well thought out and easily adaptable to particular needs to fulfill these needs better.

A very common issue that novice educators face is insulting the intelligence of their audience. The main goal is educating, not preaching to the choir. The design of your course should take into account the knowledge level of your students. Strong learning material should allow your learners to face questions that will help them reach a conclusion in a natural and proactive fashion.

Here are a few of the more common questions that arise when people wonder how best to reach their target audience:

What expectations do they have?

Making sure that expectations are met should be your top priority. Meeting these expectations will allow you to offer better training programs while also improving them with every iteration. After a particular course is completed, measure results through performance surveys. Designing any learning material is an iterative process. With each iteration, the quality of your training materials will improve if done correctly.

What type of learning is preferred?

The go-to word for training your staff nowadays is storylines. Creating storylines as close as possible to reality will help your employees adapt to your customers’ needs. Adding that layer of interactivity by personalizing the experience is also very popular with end-users nowadays.

Trying to create a game-like layout for your courses will create an exciting ambiance that will keep your students focused and engaged. Split your training module into multiple levels with an assessment afterward, giving badges, certificates, or other rewards incentivizing training.

Gamification has proven to work in a lot of areas, and education is no different. Create a tooltip that will show the learner a progress bar of his work, giving him a further sense of engagement with your course. After clearing a particular step of your program, the learner could also earn some points. They could then accumulate even more points by participating in activities and completing quizzes. While these points don’t have to offer anything in return, some employers have tried offering bonuses such as a paid vacation for the top scorers. This will incentivize your employees, but make sure not to overdo it. The actual end goal is teaching your staff how to suit your company’s needs better while also allowing them to master new skills.

How to get better feedback?

Feedback is a crucial step that you should not ignore. Offering a survey at the end of the course can help with this. The collected data will help your instructional designers create even better learning materials. Asking the right questions is very important, and an experienced instructional designer will come in handy.

Conclusion

Effectively educating a person on a particular subject can seem very difficult. We’ve all been in a situation where you understand something entirely, but explaining it to another person can seem almost impossible. Designing Digitally would like to help. We have the know-how and the personal skills that help you convey the needed information in an easy-to-understand, memorable manner.

If your company lacks specific skills needed for success, let’s dive deep to find the root of the business problem - and solve it with better employee training. Get in touch with our team today to learn more.