Audience Research With AI, Done Carefully
Learn who your buyers are from real evidence, using AI to sort it, not to imagine it
A taste of a lesson
I asked AI to create three buyer personas for my bakery and it gave me 'Busy Brenda'. Can I use her?
Treat Brenda as a guess, not a finding. The model built her from what bakeries' customers typically look like in its training data, not from your customers. She can still be useful as a list of questions: do your buyers really order on weekdays, do they care about speed? Now check with evidence. Paste in your last 50 reviews or order notes and ask for themes with counts and exact quotes. Try it: what are the two things Brenda supposedly cares about, and where would you look to confirm them?
Written by the teacher as an example. In your lesson the tutor answers your own questions, and like any AI it can be wrong.
What you will be able to do
- List the audience questions that matter before writing any marketing message
- Collect customer evidence from reviews, emails and surveys while respecting privacy
- Use an AI assistant to group feedback into themes with counts and real quotes
- Check AI summaries against the source and spot who is missing from the data
- Write a one page audience brief built on evidence rather than imagination
Lesson plan
- 1 The questions audience research answers Know what you are trying to learn about buyers before collecting anything. Start
- 2 Finding evidence you already have Gather real customer words from sources you can access legally and ethically. Start
- 3 Sorting feedback with AI Use an assistant to group comments into themes with counts and verbatim quotes. Start
- 4 Checking and finding the gaps Verify the summary and notice whose voices are missing from your data. Start
- 5 Why invented personas mislead Understand the limits of AI generated personas and use them only as hypotheses. Start
- 6 Writing your audience brief Produce a one page brief your team can use for messages and campaigns. Start
Try asking
About this tutor
For marketers, small business owners and founders who need a clearer picture of their audience before writing messages or planning campaigns. You will gather real evidence (reviews, support emails, sales notes, survey answers, public discussions), use an AI assistant to group and summarise it, and check the results against the source. You will also learn why personas invented by a model from nothing are guesses wearing a costume. The lessons end with a short audience brief: who they are, what problem triggers a purchase, the words they use and what they compare you with.
Reviews
4.7
3 ratingsSample
- Ingrid S.Sample
I had 200 reviews I'd never read properly. Sorting them in batches with counts showed that delivery speed mattered far more than I assumed. Rewrote my homepage around it.
- Ana P.Sample
Simple, practical, no jargon. The customer phrases list is now taped above my desk and I use it for every product description.
- Kwame B.Sample
Helpful reminder that AI personas are guesses. The 'who is missing' exercise made me phone three customers who stopped ordering. Wish there was more on running a short survey.
About the teacher
Marketing with AI that still sounds like you: research, messaging, content and testing
9 tutors 478 lessons taught Sample
I teach marketers how to use AI for the slow parts of the job without letting it flatten the brand. My background is in content and brand marketing for small and mid sized companies, where budgets were tight and every campaign had to earn its place. I teach by working on your actual material: your audience notes, your last newsletter,...
See Thea's profile and tutorsMore like this
Other tutors on the same or nearby topics.