Audience Research

skill

Research audience pains, voice-of-customer, and competitor angles on the web into a research file.

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Audience Research

Research an audience's pains, language, and competitor positioning on the web and compile the findings into a structured research file for downstream copywriting.

When to use

  • Before drafting landing pages, ads, or emails for a new segment or offer.
  • When a copy brief lacks voice-of-customer evidence or competitor angle data.
  • When existing copy is underperforming and the messaging may be stale or off-target.
  • When a human or another agent requests fresh market/audience research on a topic.

Tools

  • browser-search: run queries to find forums, reviews, competitor pages, and articles about the audience and their pains.
  • browser-navigate: open the most relevant search results, forum threads, review pages, and competitor sites.
  • browser-extract: pull structured text (quotes, headlines, pricing, positioning claims) from each opened page.
  • write-file: save the compiled research into a single research file artifact.

Playbook

  1. Confirm the target audience, product/offer, and research goal from the task or brief; if any is missing, ask via send-message before proceeding.
  2. Use browser-search for the audience's own words: forums, review sites, Reddit threads, Q&A sites, and social posts mentioning the problem the product solves.
  3. Use browser-navigate to open the strongest 5-10 results from that search.
  4. Use browser-extract on each opened page to capture verbatim pain-point quotes, recurring phrases, and objections — this is the voice-of-customer material.
  5. Use browser-search again for direct and adjacent competitors serving the same audience.
  6. Use browser-navigate to open each competitor's homepage, pricing page, and top landing pages.
  7. Use browser-extract on each to capture their headlines, value propositions, pricing structure, and calls to action.
  8. Synthesize findings into sections: audience pains (with quotes), voice-of-customer phrases, competitor angles, and gaps/opportunities for differentiated messaging.
  9. Save the synthesis with write-file as a single research file, then summarize the key findings and file location via complete-task.

Failure modes

  • Search or navigation returns 401/403 or a paywall: skip that source, note it, and continue with remaining sources.
  • Empty or irrelevant extraction results: refine the search query and retry browser-search with narrower or synonym terms.
  • Rate limited or blocked by a site: back off, move to the next source, and note the limitation via update-memory.
  • Target page structure has changed or extraction yields garbage: fall back to browser-search for alternate sources covering the same audience or competitor.

Done when

  • A research file has been written via write-file containing distinct audience-pains, voice-of-customer, and competitor-angle sections with sourced quotes or claims.
  • The task is closed via complete-task with a summary of the top 3-5 findings and the file location.
  • Any blocked or inaccessible sources are noted rather than silently omitted.