How to do audience research

If you want your product or service to create real change in the world; you need customers ( users/donors, clients), and a way to understand their thinking. When you’re starting out, you’re often just guessing who these people are.

How do you find out who your ideal customer [user/donor/client] is, and what matters to them? Who do you compete with for their time, attention, or money?

Audience research is the only way that you can go from guessing to knowing. But the field of audience research is pretty vast, it can feel really overwhelming - and, dare we say it, a little boring?

We hosted George Beverly at the Open community hangout to help us understand the world of research better. George has dedicated his career to understanding customers better. His book and podcast take a practical look at the audience research, and how we can use the knowledge to build better relationships with the people we serve.

Watch the full recording 👇 and browse the key takeaways from the chat below 👇👇

0:37 Why do we avoid doing audience research?

Oftentimes people are afraid of what they find out might contradict what they may believe as true. Many professionals go right into branding, marketing and product roll out without a deep understanding of what their audience want and how to deliver it.

7:37 How do we define who our audience is? 

George explains that we don’t choose our audience, our audience chooses us. 

To define and understand our audience, we try to answer the following questions; why do I need to conduct audience research? What do I already know about my audience? 

Who else is doing this in the market? What attitude and behaviour does my audience have towards product or service X? Does my product or service solve a problem or improve the experience of my audience?

12:43 How do you make sure you don’t lead your respondents towards what you want to hear? 

Work the biases out of the research by asking the opposite question and nudge people towards giving a critical review. 

For example; “Tell me why you think making product X is such a ridiculous idea!”

14:30 A lot of information on audience research focuses on the consumer market and tangible products like food or internet services. How do you do research for more intangible services, like those  in the B2B consultancy space?

Take a humanistic approach to the leaders of these organisations by getting a  feel of what an average day in their lives looks like.

Structure the conversation around understanding what would trigger them to buy your service and the barriers that are getting in the way. 

Understand how the client views value, whether in cost, price, purpose, delivery.

George recommends LinkedIn as the main tool for B2B research in this segment. LinkedIn helps you target and connect with the right people per organisation, location, job title. There are closed groups in specific professional sectors that are useful to connect and interact with multiple people.

28:19 As a consultant, what role does my personal brand and social presence play in getting B2B clients to trust my work when referred to me?

Displaying professionalism on your website that speaks to your personal brand. Having social proof from the kind of people your target audience relates to gives them a sense of trust and confidence in your service.

43:06 What types of audience research exist and what tools are useful?

George suggests we think of research as new knowledge and unpacks some of the different research methods, like attitudinal vs behavioral research, qualitative vs quantitative research.

For qualitative research, the tools are such as 1-2-1 interviews, focus groups, moderated website usability testing.

To conduct quantitative research you can use tools such as Google Analytics, tree testing, Net Promoter Score (NPS), A/B testing.

1:05:27 What’s the one big lesson you’ve learned about audience research?

George made the mistake earlier on in his career of disregarding audience research assuming he (or the team) had all the answers. The campaign wasn’t unsuccessful because the intended audience could not relate to it.

other books/podcasts on audience research

The Audience Detective book by George Beverley
A compact introduction to audience research

The Audience Detective podcast, Episode 1: ginger nut biscuits
A practical, fun podcast that inspires you to look at the world as an audience detective.