Having broadly looked at the factors that make communication successful in the case of the different audience demographics and psychographics, let us know list and try to understand the key types of audiences your communication has to be directed to in an organization. Or company.

Among the most important ones are

Employees
Customers
Suppliers
Shareholders
Financial institutions and financial publics
Government and government bodies
Industry associations and professional bodies
Social service associations and NGOs
All organizations have to deal with and handle one or more of these at any given point of time and situation.
The General Public

The general public as an audience in communication means all those people – demographically and psycho graphically classified – who are receivers of the company’s message. This category includes people who are beyond the direct target audience for the message or communication such as housewives and children on the one hand, to media, bureaucrats and politicians on the other.

In business communication of the kind we are referring to, the general public pre se is rarely the target audience. It at all the general public is the target audience, it will be only for broad corporate communications like those concerned with social service, environment protection, health care and such issued with which the organization is involved and desires to communicate this fact. Tata Steel and some of the other Tata companies who target such communications to the general public are examples.

The Government

The government, in contrast to the general public, is a major single target audience of business communication. In the past and within the so-called “license raj” in India the Government was always considered a very important and dominant target group for companies. Special attention was paid to lobbying and communication with the Government.

Today, in the context of the new liberalized business policies and economic reforms, the Government is no longer the prime target group. It is no doubt important, but to a much lesser degree. Business still has to go the Government and communicate with it on many occasions and for many reasons and, therefore, has its own place in the target group. It certainly cannot be ignored, especially when business is also concerned with general issues such, as environment, labor, employees, community service etc. Which are as much a part of company operations as sales and profits?