essential exercise #2: audience insights€¦ · audience insights this essential exercise is all...

Social Enterprise Kickstart Copyright theSedge.org, 2017

ESSENTIAL EXERCISE #2:

Audience Insights

Audience Insights

This essential exercise is all about deeply understanding the needs of your clients and

beneficiaries so that you can design the most effective and impactful solutions for

them.

As Albert Einstein said:

“If I were given 1 hour to save the planet, I would spend 59

minutes understanding the problem, and 1 minute solving it.”

The best way to ‘fall in love with the problem’ is to turn to your customers and strive to

intimately understand:

What are their hopes, fears and desires?

What are their needs, and the barriers that constraint their ability to meet them?

What is most meaningful to them?

After exploring these questions in more detail, you start to uncover the themes and

insights that enable you to design and deliver a solution for your customers/

beneficiaries that will have the greatest impact in their lives.

To guide you through the process of gathering Audience Insights, follow the prompts in

this workbook.

First you’ll identify all the stakeholders impacted by your work. Then you’ll decide who

to meet with and arrange conversations (in person or Skype is good). Finally, you’ll

document all your observations, insights, and any questions still left unanswered.

Remember, this is not a process you only complete once at the beginning on your

social enterprise development! The best entrepreneurs build a practice of collecting

Audience Insights into their very DNA.

Have fun getting to know your ideal people inside out!


Exercise 2: Stakeholder Mapping

At this stage, you want to start brainstorming and mapping all of the various

stakeholders who have a shared interest in your North Star Vision for Change (your

cause), your beneficiaries, or those organizations and individuals who will be impacted

by your work in any way. Use the prompts below to brainstorm your potential

stakeholders.

These will be the key people you want to connect with to have in-depth conversations

with!

Potential Customers and/or Beneficiaries: (students, entrepreneurs, homeless population in X city, etc)

Organizations/Individuals Who Have An Interest In Helping or Already Serve The Above Beneficiaries: (government, nonprofits, community groups, corporations, parents, etc)

Organizations/Individuals Who Work In Areas Related To Your North Star Vision for Change: (government, nonprofits, community groups, etc)


Stakeholder List

Stakeholder = Any individual or organization that has

an interest in:

• Your cause,

• The people you work with,

• Or who will be affected or

impacted by your work in any way.

List of Stakeholders to Connect With:

Call / meeting / shadowing Booked for:

Conversation Notes:


Here are questions to help you get started. Adjust to fit the specifics of your audience

and cause you are researching. Remember to keep questions open ended, and start

the conversation off broad at the beginning.

• What is one thing you can’t live without when you are _______?

• Who helps you accomplish ________?

• What frustrates you about _______?

• What keeps you up at night?

• If you could wave a magic wand and make _________ better (or change _______)

what would that look like?

• How do you deal with ________ now? What would make your experience better?

• What have you already tried to improve _______? How did it go?

• If you could eliminate ________ how would that impact your life?

• Tell me about a time you _______.

• What do you struggle with when it comes to ________?

• What’s your dream for _______?


Audience Insights

Question BanK


Audience Insights

Use this page to gather notes, observations,

insights, and further questions from your

audience conversations.

You might want to organize according to

Jobs, Gains, and Pains, but use a system that

works for you!

essential exercise #2: audience insights€¦ · audience insights this essential exercise is all...

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