{"id":10871,"date":"2026-02-23T19:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T03:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/?p=10871"},"modified":"2026-02-23T19:21:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T03:21:16","slug":"best-practices-are-meaningless-without-audience-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/best-practices-are-meaningless-without-audience-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Practices Are Meaningless Without Audience Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There isn\u2019t actually anything \u201cwrong\u201d with best practices. Best practices are general guidelines for what to do in order to ensure a general baseline of success. The problem comes when you employ best practices without personalization or a point of view. Then you\u2019re just leading with some statistically average decision and marketing to\u2026 nobody in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Certainly not bad enough to shit the bed, but definitely not good enough to be remarkable. Best practices are the \u201cbeige\u201d of marketing: when everything you\u2019re doing is just good enough, but nobody\u2019s actually influenced by it. They just\u2026 tolerate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I talked about this recently on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.weidert.com\/blog\/zero-click-marketing-for-b2bs\">Weidert podcast<\/a> (around the 8:12 mark) and how silly it is when we marketers talk about these \u201cbest practices\u201d that are really just tactics derived from data across many audiences and many contexts. As if we know what could possibly work for every audience at every given time. But we <em>can\u2019t<\/em> know what could work for every audience. We <em>can<\/em> know that we need things that will resonate with the right audience. You guessed it, this is where audience research comes in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"hs-embed-wrapper\" data-service=\"wistia\" data-script-embed=\"true\" data-responsive=\"true\" style=\"position: relative; overflow: hidden; width: 100%; height: auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 600px; min-width: 256px; display: block; margin: auto;\"><div class=\"hs-embed-content-wrapper\"><div class=\"wistia_responsive_padding\" style=\"padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><div class=\"wistia_responsive_wrapper\" style=\"height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;top:0;width:100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.net\/embed\/iframe\/04txave4ls?web_component=true&amp;seo=true\" title=\"Ep 33: Zero-Click Marketing &amp; the End of Click-Based ROI with Amanda Natividad Video\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" class=\"wistia_embed\" name=\"wistia_embed\" width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n<script src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.net\/player.js\" async=\"\"><\/script><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How Audience Research Makes Practices\u2026 Best<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/audience-research-the-complete-guide-for-marketers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">When you do audience research<\/a>, you stop asking &#8220;what should I do?&#8221; and start asking &#8220;what does this audience actually respond to?&#8221; It sounds simple, but it changes almost every downstream decision. You might\u2019ve been posting on LinkedIn three times a week (and no more than 5!!!) because that&#8217;s what the algorithm guides say. Or writing 1,500-word blog posts because that&#8217;s what &#8220;performs well for SEO.&#8221; Or you\u2019ve been spending an extra several hours per week sending pitches, or paying for an agency to send embarrassing pitches on your behalf, to show up on the better known podcasts because bigger means better which means profit. That\u2019s the best practice, right? Go for as much reach as possible. But what best practices won\u2019t tell you is that you\u2019re almost certainly better off spending those hours finding and hanging out in those semi-private Slack groups where the several hundred audience members trust each others\u2019 recommendations and niche podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what will tell you that? Audience research. The ongoing yet sporadic practice of figuring out where your audience is hanging out online, and understanding their motivations, pain points, and behaviors. Once you know all this, you\u2019re no longer marketing with the least offensive shade of beige. The messaging you write and campaigns you deploy will be bright, bold and funky purple, calming and stylish sage green, or\u2026 whatever other color <em>you know<\/em> it\u2019s supposed to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ll tell you right here that the best way to do audience research is through SparkToro because it\u2019s fast (literally all you have to do is <a href=\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/starting-today-anyone-can-analyze-any-describable-audience-in-sparktoro\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">describe your audience in plain speak<\/a>), and data-backed (we use search, clickstream, and social data to create a snapshot of where your audience is hanging out online, what they\u2019re talking about, and what they\u2019re searching for). But of course, you don\u2019t have to use SparkToro. Instead, you could:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Talk to 5 people in your target audience.&nbsp;<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>You get great bang for your buck here. If you <a href=\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/the-power-of-word-of-mouth-how-to-find-what-influences-your-customers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">talk to a mix of customers and prospects<\/a>, you might even be able to turn this into a case study (or start the conversation for that), and you\u2019ll almost certainly uncover new ways that your audience talks about their problems. Then when you market to them in their own words, it\u2019ll resonate really well. In these audience interviews, you can also ask where they hang out online, the social accounts they follow, and the shows\/YouTube channels they pay attention to.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The downsides?<\/strong> There\u2019s often a difference between what people say they do and what they actually do. Plus, in learning only what they\u2019re telling you, you\u2019re not learning where they are or what they\u2019re doing in the context in which they\u2019re suffering from the problem that you\/your product\/your service solves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Go to the Subreddit (or other community) they hang out in.&nbsp;<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>This is great for when you know where your audience is hanging out. You\u2019ll get to lurk on their real, unfiltered discussions. This gives you shared terminology, a sense for what\u2019s top of mind for them, and general inspiration for how you can create content that will resonate with them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The downsides?<\/strong> Not only do you have to be correct in identifying communities, it also might take you a while to realize value. You could be skimming through forums for hours before developing a marketing idea that truly has legs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Dig into your own analytics \u2014 but look past the vanity metrics.&nbsp;<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Your website analytics, email data, and social insights are an underutilized goldmine for audience research. Which blog posts are getting the most time-on-page, not just clicks? Which email subject lines got replies, not just opens? Which social posts sparked actual conversation instead of just passive likes? These signals tell you what your audience is genuinely engaging with vs. what they&#8217;re scrolling past.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The downsides? <\/strong>Analytics tell you about the audience you already have \u2014 not the one you&#8217;re trying to reach. And they&#8217;re backward-looking by nature, so they&#8217;re better for refining what&#8217;s working than discovering entirely new directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, shameless plug here: You could learn where your audience is hanging out online, the Subreddits they frequent, the social media accounts they follow, the keywords they search for, and the topics that are most likely to resonate with them \u2014 all on <a href=\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">SparkToro<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to Make Best Practices <em>Your<\/em> Best Practices<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Best practices are a fine starting point; they\u2019re like default settings that you still have to make your own. Audience research is how you configure those settings for your actual situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Take content format as an example. The best practice might say long-form written content builds authority. Sure, maybe. But if your audience skews toward practitioners who are heads-down in tools all day and decompress by watching YouTube in the evening, then you might be best off producing tight, useful video that fits the context they&#8217;re actually in. Though personally, I would imagine that the long-form written content is still worth it because it\u2019ll get indexed by Google and crawled by the bots which could help serve you up in AI tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or channel strategy. The best practice is to be where your audience is. Obviously. But this is useless without the next step, which is actually finding out where that is and in what context you could be most impactful. Just because there are over 3 billion users on Facebook, it doesn\u2019t mean that\u2019s where you should market your B2B tool. You need to be looking at the platforms people are hanging out on when they\u2019re likely to be receptive to your marketing. In this case, I\u2019d wager it\u2019s LinkedIn. And even then, I\u2019d say you still need to find the specific influential accounts, niche newsletters, and smaller but fast-growing podcasts. That specificity is the difference between marketing that blends in and marketing that actually lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Best practices will keep you from making catastrophic mistakes. But they&#8217;ll also keep you perpetually average. And in a marketing landscape where everyone has access to the same AI tools, the same algorithm guides, and the same &#8220;data-backed&#8221; playbooks, average is increasingly invisible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The marketers who cut through aren&#8217;t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets or even the most creative ideas. They&#8217;re the ones who know their audience well enough to show up in the right places, say the right things, and make the right people feel like the content was made specifically for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There isn\u2019t actually anything \u201cwrong\u201d with best practices. Best practices are general guidelines for what to do in order to ensure a general baseline of success. The problem comes when you employ best practices without personalization or a point of view. Then you\u2019re just leading with some statistically average decision and marketing to\u2026 nobody in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,6,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content-marketing","category-marketing","category-tactics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Best Practices Are Meaningless Without Audience Research - SparkToro<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There isn\u2019t actually anything \u201cwrong\u201d with best practices. 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Best practices are general guidelines for what to do in order to ensure a general baseline of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/best-practices-are-meaningless-without-audience-research\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SparkToro\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/facebook.com\/sparktoro\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-02-24T03:19:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-02-24T03:21:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/images.sparktoro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-23-at-7.15.01-PM.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1114\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"644\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Amanda Natividad\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@sparktoro\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@sparktoro\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amanda Natividad\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/best-practices-are-meaningless-without-audience-research\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/best-practices-are-meaningless-without-audience-research\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Amanda Natividad\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/267eae421b3417b09bcc1dbc44f77644\"},\"headline\":\"Best Practices Are Meaningless Without Audience Research\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-02-24T03:19:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-02-24T03:21:16+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/best-practices-are-meaningless-without-audience-research\/\"},\"wordCount\":1308,\"commentCount\":0,\"articleSection\":[\"Content Marketing\",\"Marketing\",\"Tactics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/best-practices-are-meaningless-without-audience-research\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/best-practices-are-meaningless-without-audience-research\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/best-practices-are-meaningless-without-audience-research\/\",\"name\":\"Best Practices Are Meaningless Without Audience Research - SparkToro\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-02-24T03:19:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-02-24T03:21:16+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/267eae421b3417b09bcc1dbc44f77644\"},\"description\":\"There isn\u2019t actually anything \u201cwrong\u201d with best practices. 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