Marketing programs are more likely to die from indigestion than starvation. Modern brands tend to gorge themselves on data while starving for insights. The difference between a $10M company and a $1B company isn’t better products – it’s intrinsically knowing their audience and investing in the right kind of audience research.
Brands can measure more things than ever before. And while you should measure many things, measuring everything while avoiding conversations with real people is a problem.
Let’s dive into why most companies get research wrong, and how the winners are getting it right.
The Stakes Have Never Been Higher
The metrics are clear: Companies that nail audience identification see 2-3X better ROI on their marketing spend. Yet most marketers do not know their customer’s demographic info (age, gender, income) and 71% have no knowledge of their customer’s pain points. Marketers are shooting in the dark (per HubSpot).
Part of this is simply collecting a modicum amount of data. I mean, not knowing demographics. Come on people.
But, the real gold requires research into pain points, motivation, psychographics, and customer needs. These insights are the lifeblood of modern social, content, and especially performance teams. It’s the difference between ads that spend money and ads that make money. The secret? It’s not more data – it’s more strategic data and asking better questions.
How Audience Research Builds Winning Messages
Let’s start with what works.
With every performance marketing strategy, I recommend improving their audience data. That can sound like an unnecessary investment to many brands. But we’ve repeatedly seen these investments pay off in lower ad costs and increasing conversions. A few quick examples.
1. Shifting From AI to Empathy
A fintech startup we manage ads for was testing an AI-focused messaging campaign that sounded impressive but wasn’t moving the needle. An audience survey and 1-on-1 convos told us that their customers weren’t interested AI buzzwords. Instead, those same customers connected immediately when they thought someone understood the complexity of their business and their wide range of expenses. The result? Our updated messaging saw a 3X increase in their conversion rate and lowered CPC.
2. Targeting Experts over CEOs
One of our healthcare clients spent months targeting C-Suite execs with a premium content marketing effort. The bad news? Leadership was the wrong audience for their product. Through a series of customer interviews and buying center focus groups, we discovered the real decision-makers were more junior subject matter experts that these decision-makers depended on for recommendations. Internal influencers were hungry for more technical info that our client did not have in their ads or other content channels. We pivoted their targeting strategy and over 6 months with the new approach, we dropped their customer acquisition costs by 20%.
3. Finding the Right Messenger & Right Message for Gen Z
I recently developed a higher ed research project that surveyed Gen Z students and higher ed marketers to identify marketing gaps. We found a clear opportunity in YouTube and video social channels, where Gen Z spends significant time researching their college decisions. A key finding was that Gen Z students seek authentic video content from current students, particularly about financial aid, housing, and job placement. Topics that most colleges are ignoring in their social content today. Based on our findings, we’ve recommended that several colleges invest more in student UGC content tailored for college decision searches.
The Art and Science Behind the Success
Data is useful in so many ways that we over-index it. The baseline of your customer’s age and location is still essential and the science of what they click, when, and why should not be skipped.
BUT, the emotional queues… omg, so importnat. Understanding those all important human pieces of who they spend time with, what they care about, and what problem they are trying to solve… THAT is a more useful lever. A few groundrules as you level up your audience research capabilities (capes? are we saying capes? us that how you spell it?).
1. Behavioral Segmentation Is Your New God
The old ways of segmentation (age, income, location) are not here right now, please hang up the phone and try again. Modern tools and AI are helping invent micro-segments based on behavior patterns, digital body language, and real-time interactions. Even without all the fancy tools, start adjusting your website, performance, and customer success based on the emotional decisions your users are making. Design tests to help you understand the psychology behind their behavior.
For instance, if you give a customer two calls to action to click on, one labeled as the lowest price and one labeled as the best lifetime value, you can immediately filter your audience into price sensetive and value focused segments.
2. Mixed-Method Audience Research: Do The Work
AKA, the what, the why, the landscape, and the culture.
To refocus, we’re talking about the importance of art with science. Both are essential. To put it another way, as humans, we make both rational and irrational decisions. We do the math and we overdo the emotion. If your audience research does not account for both, you’re trying to ride a bicycle with only one working wheel. Not advised, friend.
Make sure audience intel bicycle has all these working pieces:
- Quantitative data (the what): A/B testing, analytics, surveys, behavioral mapping
- Qualitative insights (the why): Survey verbatims, focus groups, in-depth interviews, ethnographic studies
- Competitive intelligence (the landscape): Systematic analysis of competitor strategies and gaps
- Trends mapping (the culture): Consistent checkpoints on creative, demographic, and platform specific trends
3. The Subtle Art of Giving A Damn
Here’s the truth: Numbers lie. Or at least they don’t tell the whole truth. And the numbers that do tell the truth are available to everyone. Your competitors know the same numbers you do and have access to the same targeting algorithms at Meta, Google, and TikTok that you do. Math gets commoditized. You still can’t ignore it, but you need more to break through.
A friend of mine at General Mills calls this the Owner’s Mentality. Caring enough to ask follow-up questions about how things really work, what is making an impact, or how you’re helping your customers. Invest in this mindset.
The PHDs we work with would call this qualitative research. It’s the art and emotion. And the most successful audience research doubles down on it. It breaks down into a simple task: Talk to your customers to better understand their base needs. But, you know, strategically. Invest in user interviews that go beyond surface-level feedback. Bring in experts or find the people on your team who are more empathic to take these tasks on. Always doublecheck audience assumptions, use focus groups, and consider ethnographic studies that can reveal what customers do, not what they say they do.
It’s the difference between asking someone if they’re generous vs. checking how much they tipped their Uber driver.
The Audience Research Path Forward: Choose Your Weapons
AKA, let’s put all these words into action. Getting to work.
The real minimum viable audience research here is making sure you’re actually talking to your customers more. They don’t usually know how to tell you, but when you ask the right questions they can share incredible insights on your product and which messages, channels, and creative will work to best command attention. Of these, creative strategy is the biggest opportunity to stand out from your peers and where they will often spend the least time.
Each of the below audience research recommendations will help you. Do all of them if you can. We conduct this type of research for our strategy and performance clients, but if you need a leaner way to put these ideas into practice, I recommend starting with #3 and working it into your team’s regular cadence ASAP. Otherwise, you won’t know what you’re missing.
1. Competitive Benchmark Report — 60 days
Start with a competitive intelligence sprint. Map your top five competitors’ audiences, channels, messaging, and creative. This requires deep research of organic social, content marketing, and ad tracking. Review their ad creative across Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and other top social channels, identifying which messages receive the most consistent investment.
Create a gap analysis matrix that reveals underserved segments and benchmark your share of voice against competitors. The output here isn’t just data — it’s a competitive audience matrix that spotlights clear white space opportunities your competitors are missing.
2. Audience Research Survey — 90 days
Launch a multi-channel audience survey campaign. This is the deep dive. Target 250-500 existing customer responses at a minimum. Ideally, those that have been onboarded in the last 6-12 months. If you don’t quite have that many paying customers yet, opt for a broader panel audience of consumers similar to your target customer. Expert help is key here.
Focus on understanding purchase decision triggers, where people get their information during the buying journey, and how they perceive your brand versus competitors. Dig deep into unmet needs and budget sensitivity. This isn’t about collecting random data points but building an audience motivation map that directly informs your message-testing strategy.
3. Build a VOC Engine (Voice of Customer) — Ongoing
Establish what I call a VOC Engine. This is your ongoing audience research reality check. This can have a few different looks based on your product, structure, and resources.
Option A is to set up a monthly customer council with 12 power users, rotating membership quarterly to keep insights fresh. This is best for mature brands with one core product type.
Option B is to conduct bi-weekly interviews with new customers to catch shifting market dynamics. Use this model if you’re a startup or other small, growth company that’s still defining your audience and/or product.
Option C is to run quarterly focus groups segmented by user type, and maintain monthly trend analysis of customer satisfaction metrics (NPS or others). The deliverable here is a rolling 90-day insight report with clear action items for your marketing and product teams. This is ideal for brands that have a split focus on multiple audiences and/or multiple products.
Audience Research > Ad Budgets
The companies that will win in the next decade aren’t the ones with the biggest data sets – they’re the ones that turn that audience research into actionable insights. The tools are there. The methods are proven. The only question is… will you invest in understanding your audience’s real emotional profile — or are you comfortable with expensive guesswork?
Remember… in today’s attention economy, the scarce resource isn’t money, it’s real understanding. Your competition isn’t other companies; it’s the indifference of your audience. And an inability to command attention.
Time to get to work. Identify the right questions. And talk to your customers more.