Audience Research AI Prompting for Marketers
One area that many marketers barely scratch the surface of in their online business is research about their target audience. That’s a shame, because instead of learning everything they can about a buyer base and then serving them well, they’re picking things to promote or create and hoping they find an audience for it.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) tools, you’ll be able to gain insight about your audience so that you can use it in every step of your business. From narrowing down your niche and choosing the right business model to elevating your content messaging so that you become a highly sought-after niche leader, tools like ChatGPT can deliver for you.
You may think you already know your target audience. But even the top tier earners online conduct enhanced research into the behaviors, preferences and concerns of their prospective buyers so they can convert better.
You may not know how to coax this information out of AI tools, but you’re going to soon discover that there are many prompts you can use to reveal details about your audience that help your business grow substantially.
AI tools have the ability to tap into large databases of information and can often reveal up-to-date details it gains through online analysis on social media and elsewhere. Left to do on your own, it would require many hours of scanning and trying to sort through and analyze the same information.
With the right prompts, you’re going to not only gather crucial audience information, but get insight on how to use it to your benefit. Soon, you’ll be well-equipped to log onto ChatGPT and unleash a tsunami of information that will help you edge out the competition.
Prompting AI for Basic Demographic Insight
You should never dismiss the thought of conducting research into the basic demographics of your prospective audience. You never know what detail you may have wrong or not have known about.
Basic demographic information includes things like the age, gender, education and other details of your core audience. Some basic information may not be crucial in your niche, but with some niches, you’ll find that facts matter – like the age of a person when discussing health, for example.
Sometimes, the demographic details serve as indicators of how your audience is going to behave, what preferences they have and more. For example, older men and women can be marketed to on Facebook more easily or in more abundance than TikTok.
By having AI uncover this information for you, you’ll be able to include it in other prompts when getting AI to do additional tasks for you that will help grow your business online.
Instead of just having one big prompt for AI to give you the demographic details of your niche audience (which you can also do to get the ball rolling), you want to take each individual demographic aspect and create a separate prompt for it.
If you’re in the keto weight loss niche, you might prompt: “Identify the age bracket of the biggest segment of the online audience who searches for keto meal planning on social media.”
If you’re in the health niche, you might ask for gender information in a prompt like this: “Analyze the preferences according to both genders for dietary supplements and the ingredients they look for when shopping.”
If you’re in the online marketing niche, you might use a prompt to get education level details, like this: “Give me the education level for each level of marketing courses sold online, including beginner, intermediate and advanced.”
You can gather information about their location, their income, whether they’re married and have kids, and more. Once you have this information, you can tailor your content so that it resonates with your audience more clearly.
Prompting AI for Behavioral Information
Next, you want to have AI work to gather behavioral information about your target audience. These are things like their browsing patterns, purchasing habits and engagement online.
It helps you discover how this audience is likely to interact with and convert with your own brand so that you can implement strategies in line with those findings. So if you are in the health niche, you might prompt AI for information like this: “Track the buyer behavior of customers who purchase weight loss supplements and identify other weight loss products they purchase afterwards.”
You can also prompt AI to uncover engagement with your social media content or with all social media content in your niche. For example, you might prompt it like this: “Based on engagement such as likes, shares and comments, identify the topics most likely to generate engagement in the online marketing niche on Facebook.”
You can have AI tell you about niche-specific behaviors. For instance, you might prompt AI like this: “Track the past 3 months of searches in the health industry and identify the top 10 growing trends by consumers for health issues.”
By digging into the behavioral patterns of our audience, you’ll ensure you remain a cutting edge leader who has his or her finger on the pulse of your niche demographic and outlast the competition.
Prompting AI for Psychographic Details
The mental state of your audience that includes things like their attitude, interests and personal values can be an important part of how you market to them. AI can help you explore these concepts regarding your target audience so that you can put them to use in your online content.
Understanding their lifestyle and choices can reveal insight that tips the scales in your favor when it comes to clickthroughs and conversions. Your content has to resonate with them so they feel an affinity for your brand.
When you know this information, it shows you why they might choose one product or brand over another. It can do this through social listening. So you might prompt something like: “Analyze online conversations about intermittent fasting and explain the attitude for or against it as a method of losing weight quickly.”
You can find out about your audience’s lifestyle that includes their daily routine, habits, hobbies, what they do for fun and how they work. For example, you prompt AI with: “Using online marketing forums and social media accounts, identify the work-life balance issues these entrepreneurial hopefuls are dealing with.”
Other psychographic insight AI can uncover can be found in the tone people use when discussing certain topics. As you may know, people are very vocal when disappointed and if they’re passionate about something, it will show in the sentiment they express.
So you might use a prompt such as: “Interpret the sentiment online about the necessity of including regular exercise with a nutrition plan when trying to lose weight and tell me what motivates people to make a decision to add it to their daily routine.”
When AI uncovers some of this data for you, you can start using it to develop the right slants and tones of your content. For example, if you discover a big side interest in holistic health when studying dieters, you can weave some of that into your content.
Prompting AI for Audience Pain Points
We hear about pain points a lot. Understanding the struggles of your audience is one of the most important factors in being able to convert visitors into buyers. People also shop based on goals, but even those are often rooted in pain points.
For example, someone may have a goal to lose 100 pounds – but that’s because they have pain points of inflammation, mobility issues, physical pain, shame, etc. AI can show you the various pain points that can help you build a list and cater to them.
You can prompt AI in several different ways to learn of your audience’s pain points. For example, you might tell it: “Evaluate the online messages by people who need to lose over 50 pounds and identify the top 3 health issues that are associated with their obesity.”
You can also prompt for solutions that you can promote based on certain pain points your audience struggles with like this: “Assess the discontent among online entrepreneurs who take SEO courses and identify a better form of instruction that will satisfy them that I can create as a video course.”
Try to be specific when fishing for pain points using AI – not too vague or generic. For example, ask it to “Extract key concerns of people asking for advice on which niche to choose in online marketing forums.”
You can even ask AI to tailor the messaging for you that it discovers. In your sequential conversation with AI, once it tells you about a customer common concern, you can prompt it with a follow up request such as: “Based on that biggest concern, write a headline for my info product that makes the reader have hope their problem will be solved.”
When you have information about the pain points of your audience, you’re going to not only be able to show your empathy in the blog content and emails you produce, but also create and promote products that alleviate their issues and give them a better life.
Prompting AI for Competitor Audience Information
You don’t just want to understand who your own target audience is – you need to know who is following and buying from your competitors. If you’re in the same niche, then your goal will be to become one of the other niche leaders they listen to.
Depending on the tools you’re using and who the competitor is (if they’re well-known enough), you can gather information about their audience that might serve you well in your online endeavors.
Your competitors may actually be doing this on you right now – uncovering information about your audience that helps them rank their content better, convert their landing page better and ultimately outperform you.
The same information you’re seeking about your own audience (demographics, behaviors, preferences, etc.), you can discover about the people you’re competing against.
For example, you can prompt AI like this: “Give me the demographic details including age, gender, education and income level of the top 3 info product creators in the [topic] niche.”
Or, you might have someone specific in mind and you can ask AI to: “Asses [competitor name]’s blog and tell me the topics of the posts that get the most traffic and engagement.”
When you know details about your competitors’ audience, you can position your messaging to appeal to them in ways others aren’t yet doing. For example, you can have AI: “Evaluate discussions online about [competitor name] and give me a list of the strengths and weaknesses people associate with them.”
You can also ask about it in general, such as asking for the strengths and weaknesses associated with the top 3 competitors in your niche. This is helpful if it doesn’t have enough information about the competitor you mention.
If a brand releases something and you want to know how the audience is responding to it, you can prompt it with this: “Analyze the way people are responding to [brand]’s new product and identify their likes and dislikes about it.”
You can inquire about pricing strategies with a particular audience, ask for it to compare engagement or content to give advice on how to better compete for the same audience, and more.
Prompting AI for Audience Sentiment Analysis
Customer sentiment can be found and analyzed by AI in a matter of seconds online. This is more about the emotions and opinions of your target audience. Ut can get this information across many different platforms including social media, blogs, forums and more.
Knowing how your audience feels about something helps you tap into that language so that they feel as if you understand their needs and goals better. AI can find this in reviews of products, too – helping you build a better product based on what’s previously launched.
The great thing about this is that AI natural language processing capabilities, so it can grasp a tone of frustration, disappointment or even sheer satisfaction. You might prompt AI like this: “Evaluate consumer sentiment about reading content generated by AI versus a human.”
You can also be specific about the sources used in gathering this data, such as specifying you want the information gathered from Instagram comments or Facebook public groups.
Once you have the overall sentiment of what you wanted to know, you can apply it in your marketing campaigns. Sometimes, you’ll find that you’re on the right track and other times you’ll see a need for some course correction.
Prompting AI for Audience Trend Forecasting
Trends are another audience detail that AI tools can help you identify. Whether it’s based on trends already emerging or those it predicts based on patterns of behavior, this technology can help you formulate a future marketing plan.
With online marketing, you often have a fast-moving niche topic, and if you don’t stay aware of trends, you’ll be considered outdated and left behind by your target audience. To prevent this, use some prompts that help you stay ahead of the curve.
AI can analyze data and buyer behavior and tell you what to expect in the near future. Prompt it like this: “Using search queries in the last 4 weeks, identify topics that show rising interest in the [topic] niche.”
That’s perfect for content planning and even info product development. You can also ask for specific rising trends based on the media format or platform you want it to consider, like this: “Based on searches and interest within YouTube videos, identify 10 queries in the [topic] niche that are gaining traction with the audience.”
For predictive analysis, where AI isn’t necessarily going off of existing trends but what’s expected to happen, you can prompt it like this: “Predict the next trends you see occurring in the online marketing industry in regards to social marketing.”
You can also add a qualifier like “Based on [data] information, analyze the trajectory of [topic] niche in the coming year.” So if you have data to include that will help AI forecast what will happen, that can be helpful.
Some of the ways you might use this include developing info products based on topics you know will be in demand, just as AI topics are in demand with online entrepreneurs wanting to learn how to use the technology.
You can also have AI predict trends in niches that closely complement your own so that you can begin creating content that merges the two together and allows for crossover campaigns and profits.
This strategy even allows you to go back and freshen up existing content on your blog so that it’s in line with what is expected to happen (or already occurring) when it comes to trends in your niche, ensuring you maintain or gain ranking in the SERPs (search engine results pages).
Prompting AI for Audience Engagement Analysis
Engagement is something many marketers covet as a sign that their niche leadership is working. It’s also a form of social proof that your target audience looks for when deciding whether or not to follow your advice.
AI has the ability to decipher what your audience will respond best to specifically for engagement purposes. That might be the media format, the message, the tone or platform.
Depending on the tools you use, you can have AI conduct an analysis based on the time visitors spend on a page within your site, whether or not they click through on a link, what media formats they engage with most, and so on.
You might find that users stay longer and engagement more with blog posts on your site that have a mix of media formats rather than just text. Or you could find that your audience is highly engaged on YouTube, but not very much on TikTok.
This information allows you to navigate your marketing strategy where you’re spending more time on what’s fruitful and less on what your target audience tends to ignore. If you lack engagement altogether, it can evaluate what people are likely to interact with and help you formulate a plan to achieve your goals.
To begin, you can prompt AI to help you figure out how to increase engagement. For example, you might say, “The bounce rate on my recent blog posts is very low and I need advise on making the content sticky. Analyze the last 3 posts and advice me on what my audience is looking for that they’re not finding.”
Another way you can prompt AI is to help you get comparison analysis information for better engagement. For example, you might prompt AI like this: “Compare the audience engagement rates of [niche topic] YouTube videos that have timestamps versus those that don’t.”
The information AI uncovers about engagement can help you decide what type of content to create in terms of media formats. It can help you figure out if your content needs an interactive element to it, and it can even help you develop a campaign of consistency with a certain frequency that appeals most to those interested in your niche.
Prompting AI for Audience Churn Prediction
Churn is when your audience is going to abandon your brand by unsubscribing or not buying products and services from you any longer. AI can help you take preventative measures against that by doing some audience investigation.
Everyone should be aware of what’s putting their business at risk for a high churn rate. Not only can AI tell you why it might be happening to you, but it can also give tips on corrective measures you can take to turn things around.
This is a predictive process that AI can use to figure out who is most likely to abandon your brand for something better. It’s much easier for you to succeed by retaining happy customers than it is to continually have to seek out new customers to bring onboard.
Based on information you provide as data, AI can tell you a lot about your churn risk. Some of the information it may need will include transaction history, open rates for emails, site traffic and more.
You can prompt AI for this kind of information like this: “Based on the attached transaction history from the past six months, identify a list of customers whose loyalty to the brand is waning.”
Or, you might ask, “Taking current email open rates for my list into consideration identify which topics are causing a decline in interest for being on my list as a subscriber.” You can even provide AI with a list of customer communications so it can sift through the data and pinpoint problematic areas in your business that could result in customer abandonment.
Once you have this type of information in hand, you can use it to segment at-risk subscribers and formulate a plan for retention. You can re-engage them with content and offers AI suggests based on behaviors and sentiment.
Prompting AI for Audience Collaboration Preferences
Collaborating is a strategy many marketers want to take advantage of because it instantly gives you a boost of exposure to another person’s followers. But a lot could go wrong if you align yourself with the wrong person.
Whether they’re riddled with scandals or simply don’t have the right audience, you want AI’s help in ensuring you’re collaborating with the right individuals to make a difference in the growth of your business.
Your goal is to amplify your messaging – primarily on social media platforms. You can form strategic partnerships with niche influencers who can send a flood of traffic to your account.
Start by prompting AI identifies influencers in your niche. You can prompt it by saying: “identify the top influencers and micro influencers within the [niche] community who have a large following on [platform].”
You can also ask AI tools (depending on what you’re using) to “Predict the response of our followers to a collaboration with [influencer] if the goal is increased engagement and do the same for the influencer’s audience when they see a collaboration with my brand.”
Go through the details AI uncovers for you and map out a list of the best individuals you may want to collaborate with. Then you can ask AI to: “Develop a pitch for a cross-promotion collaboration that both mine and [influencer’s name] audience will appreciate that I can suggest to increase our following.”
You can then have AI help you design a campaign for whatever social media platform you want to target. But before blindly aligning with anyone, make sure you dig into their reputation.
Prompting AI for Personalization Optimization
Optimization comes in many forms and when it comes to your target audience, AI can help you optimize the personalization you’re using so that they truly appreciate your emails, recommendations and more.
When these elements are personalized to their needs, it makes them feel as if you understand them and that fosters a sense of loyalty between them and your brand – something that many marketers miss out on.
For this purpose, you might prompt AI like this: “Segment email subscribers on my list based on the subject line topics they open the most and tailor a product promotion to each one based on their preferences.”
You can also ask for something like this: “Analyze the engagement of my audience to determine the best way to create social media campaigns that cater to their personal preferences and makes it feel tailored to their needs.”
When you gain all of this kind of data from AI, you can segment and personalize emails better, make informed product recommendations that line up with engagement and purchase history, and create customized content that caters to new visitors who are in need of the same.
It can even benefit your paid ad campaigns if you are running them on search engines or social media platforms and want to target a specific audience with a more personalized ad creative.
You can take the information you gather and apply it to your chatbot scripts and website pop-ups, too. You can map out the journey of your audience based on their personalized preferences and give them a better experience all around.
Knowing your target audience inside and out is a crucial element of online success. You can’t afford to pour time, money and effort into building a business that you don’t research properly.
In addition to niche research and strategies to be used for conversions and profits, you have to know the needs, wants, preferences and behaviors of your audience to help guide you in the creation of content, products and more.