Three Reasons You Need Audience Understanding Surveys in Your Creative Toolkit

From Persona to Person: Dig Deeper with Audience Understanding Surveys

 

You’re a strategic powerhouse. You pride yourself on knowing who your target audience is, where to find them, and how engaged they are. But do you understand what your audience values, how they see themselves, and how they see the world? 

 

With the average person exposed to as many as 10,000 ads each day, breaking through the noise takes more than a catchy slogan — it takes a message that resonates on a deeper level. 

 

That’s why forward-thinking brands, campaigns, and agencies turn to Grow Progress’ Audience Understanding Surveys to unlock the values, motivations, and identities that drive audience behaviors. 

 

Here are the top three reasons you need to add Audience Understanding Surveys to your toolkit: 

 

Learn Real Motivators, Not Just Demographics

 

Audience Understanding Surveys (AUS) help you to understand why your audience thinks the way they do, not just who they are. Your current research toolkit might tell you that you’re talking to suburban women aged 35–49, but AUS results tell you what they believe in, how they see the world, or how your issue connects to their values. 

 

You’ll also hear directly from a representative sample of your target audience in their own words, revealing the emotional and identity-based drivers behind their decisions. This means your creatives and strategists can tap into real values and respondents, not just a vague persona.

 

Get a Research Brief that Actually Inspires Creativity

 

Too many research briefs are built around assumptions, demographics, or recycled insights. Audience Understanding Surveys give your research and creative teams a jumpstart by delivering an actionable, evidence-based research analysis in just days. 

 

You’ll walk away with clear insights into:

 

  • Audience values and personality traits
  • How they see the world
  • How they feel about your topic

 

This level of detail sharpens your messaging and helps your team brainstorm smarter, iterate creatives faster, and message test more effectively. 

 

Focus Group Insights at Polling Speeds

 

Audience Understanding Surveys are the ultimate shortcut to strategic, data-backed creative work. Focus groups take multiple weeks and are often a time, cost and patience burden. Plus, you need even more manpower and experience to parse through the results and create a report. Audience Understanding Surveys give you the same strategic clarity, with fast, self-service tools in just days. 

 

Instead of digging through hours of video or audio for anecdotal soundbites, get structured, segmentable data with easy-to-view responses that make insights immediately actionable. In the same amount of time it takes to get a focus group off the ground, you can get the deep audience insights needed to kickstart creative development and move on to iterative, pre-flight message testing. 

 

Ready to add Audience Understanding Surveys to your Toolkit?

 

Creatives who use Audience Understanding Surveys aren’t guessing what audiences care about. They know

 

Want to build smarter campaigns, unlock deeper audience insights, and ground your creative in real-world beliefs? Then let’s talk and add Audience Understanding Surveys to your research toolkit. 

 

Reach out to your Client Success Manager or [email protected] to start designing your first survey!