Audience Strategist

The Audience Strategist is the second of four in the Strategy phase. It turns your Goals output and Research findings into three buyer personas tied to your Key Results. Comms and Media use them as their target definition.

What it does

Audience Strategist produces an executive summary with a persona table and three detailed buyer personas. The table covers name, strategic value, primary Key Result, addressable market, and priority (two High, one Medium is typical).

Each persona includes:

• Job-to-be-Done — a quote in the persona's voice describing what the product does for them
• Background — demographics, psychographics, and lived context
• Purchase Triggers and Barriers — two-column table, three rows each
• Decision Criteria and Influences — two-column table, three rows each
• KR Alignment — primary KR plus one or two secondary KRs, named exactly as Goals wrote them
• Identification Signals — three behavioral signals the Media Strategist maps to targetable proxies

When the brief omits figures, the output uses bracketed placeholders (e.g., [PRICE TBD]) rather than inventing numbers. Fill those gaps in your brief before re-running.

Where to find it

Navigate to Strategy inside any brand or campaign (after Research completes). Audience is the second of four tabs. A full Strategy run takes around 10-12 minutes; the Audience Strategist takes roughly 2-3 minutes.

How it works

The strategists run sequentially. Goals runs first; Audience reads the Goals KR table, then the brand profile, campaign brief, Research consumer/culture/social outputs, and attached documents. Web research fills remaining gaps, capped at three calls.

How this differs from the Research Consumer Analyst: The Consumer Analyst maps the audience landscape without reference to campaign goals. The Audience Strategist works from the opposite direction: starting from your KRs, it defines the three personas you need to reach them. Consumer Analyst output is one of its inputs.

What you can adjust

Campaign brief specificity — Named KPIs, price points, and audience descriptors reduce placeholder values and sharpen persona backgrounds.

Document attachment — Attach documents from the Documents page before starting a Strategy run. Segmentation studies or CRM exports feed directly into persona backgrounds.

Refine — Use the Refine button after a run to submit feedback. Refining Audience re-runs only this strategist (Comms and Media may also re-run). Prior versions stay in history. See Refine.

Limits and known issues

• Persona count is fixed at three. For very narrow campaigns, the third persona may overlap the second. Review all three before briefing teams.
• KR names follow Goals output exactly. Imprecise Goals KRs produce imprecise persona KR alignment. Refine Goals first if the framing is off.
• Placeholder values need human fill. When the brief omits numbers, placeholders appear in persona output. Fill them before re-running.
• Beta software. The persona framework is opinionated. Validate before briefing creative or media partners.