It is very important to know and understand the audience you want to address prior to delivering a speech because knowing your audience and analysing your audience will help the speaker to discover informations to use and build common ground between the speaker and the audience in order to persuade or educate them.
In order to persuade the audience, a speaker has to find out what the target audience values, and then find a way to give it to them before making rhetorical appeals. It is very important to educate and convince the audience because knowing your audience helps to shape your message in a way that will gain their acceptance. therefore you will not only be educating them, you have also persuaded them.
