Structuring Your Team for Audience Success

Many companies wrestle with how to structure their data, insight, research, analytics teams. There is no right answer. But here is one perspective that we hope provokes some useful thinking and ideas. Here's one ideal structure for an 'audience' team.

At Audience Strategies, we believe the most impactful approach to growing and engaging your audience is taking an evidence-based, data-driven strategy. But to truly leverage the power of data and insights, you need the right team structure and capabilities in place. Here is our perspective on how to build out your internal teams to drive audience success: Focus on the “Voice of the Audience” The needs and wants of your target audience groups should be represented in every major business decision. We recommend establishing an executive-level Chief Audience Officer role to oversee two key teams: Audience Strategy (also known as “Insight”) and Audience Science (including data scientists and economists). This structure will enable faster, smarter decision-making and a customer-first approach.

Build an Audience Strategy Team This team brings together research, insights, and analytics professionals from across the organization under a common goal: “Using the wants and needs of target audience groups to identify strategic business decisions that will drive growth.” Their role is to understand your audience deeply, then make actionable recommendations for engaging and retaining them. Capabilities should include qualitative and quantitative research, data analysis, and identifying key opportunities and risks by analyzing internal data as well as social, market, and competitive intelligence. Develop an Audience Science Team This team includes data scientists, economists, and others with strong predictive modeling and analytics skills. Their role is to test strategic hypotheses, prove which decisions actually cause changes in audience behavior, predict the business impact of potential investments and partnerships, and translate insights into economic value. Capabilities should include designing experiments, demonstrating true causality, predicting economic outcomes, and calculating the ROI of business decisions.

With the right team structure and capabilities in place focused on understanding and activating your audience, you can make smarter choices, accelerate growth, and build a sustainable competitive advantage. At Audience Strategies, we help brands develop customized audience strategies and build the internal teams to support them. Please reach out to us to learn more about how we can help you leverage the power of your audience data.