Understand what your audience really needs by talking with them. This guide helps you structure interviews that reveal valuable insights for stronger communications.

In mission-driven communications, we often have a highly diverse audience. Everyone we seek to reach has significantly different interests. Potential funders want to contribute to causes and organizations that will deliver results. Members of local communities want to be involved in decisions about policies and programs that might affect them. Government policy makers want practical solutions that show constituents they’re addressing real needs.

We might understand the needs of these groups at a high level. But effective comms requires deeper insight into what really matters to our audience members.

In a recent article, I described how to capture the essential insights about your audience by creating personas. Those personas work best when they’re built on real conversations with real people — not assumptions or educated guesses. This article shares some practical tips for conducting audience interviews that yield a treasure trove of insights.

Structuring your interview

Of course, there are countless ways to design an interview. The approach I typically use follows a logical flow that mirrors the persona categories. This structure makes it easy to create the personas — and after that, some targeted value propositions.

Here are five categories and some example questions to organize your interviews. Naturally, you will likely refine and adapt these to suit your purposes, but this general set of questions can yield valuable data:

General

Start by understanding their role and daily reality. These questions establish context and help people ease into the conversation.

• What is your job? Can you give me a short description of your role?
• Can you walk me through a typical day?
• What do you like most about your work? What do you like least?

Specific tasks and responsibilities

Move into the actual work they do. This helps you understand what they’re trying to accomplish and what tasks fill their day.

• Tell me about the last project you worked on. Who else was involved?
• Do you have a specialty or a particular kind of project you focus on?
• Can you describe your process for [specific task]? What happens first? What happens next?

Pain points and frustrations

People focus intensely on their problems. Understanding what makes people’s work difficult helps you position your solutions as relevant and valuable.

• What’s hard about [specific task]?
• What are the top challenges you face in [area of interest]?
• What frustrates you most about your current approach?

Gains and aspirations

Finally, explore what success looks like for them. This helps you frame your value propositions in terms of their goals.

• What are you hoping to do better this year?
• What would the best possible future look like for your projects?
• If you could wave a magic wand and fix one thing, what would it be?

Values and beliefs

These questions help reveal what motivates people at a deeper level — crucial for creating messages that align with them.

• Why did you get into your line of work?
• If you had to pick three things that matter most to you, what would they be?
• What kinds of beliefs or practices help guide you and keep you going when times are hard?

Four principles for better interviews

When you’re ready to get out there and talk to people, here are four foundational principles that will make your interviews more productive:

Meet them where they are (both literally and figuratively). Whenever possible, talk with people in their own environment—their office, their community, anywhere they feel comfortable. Be aware of your own assumptions about them, and listen with an open mind. This approach helps people relax and share more openly.

Progress from general to specific. Start with easy, general questions that warm people up. Then gradually move toward more specific topics, digging deeper into their frustrations, aspirations, and what really matters to them. 

Use quality questions. Low-quality questions include yes/no questions that shut down conversation, and leading questions that introduce your own bias. For example, “Are the current government’s bad policies causing difficulty for you?” is both a yes/no and a leading question. In contrast, open-ended and objective questions leave room for the person to answer honestly and clearly from their own experience. “In what ways have any current government policies affected you?” doesn’t assume anything and opens the door to getting more quality information.

Hear it in their own words. Capture direct quotes as much as possible. You might need to ask clarifying questions, but don’t interpret or summarize while you’re listening — that comes later. If you’re working with translators, ask them to translate verbatim. The actual words people use often reveal insights that your paraphrasing might miss.

Start listening

Audience interviews don’t need to be complicated. A 30-minute conversation with someone from your target audience can yield insights you would never have guessed. And when you compile those insights into personas, you create a tool your whole team can use to keep your communications focused on what actually matters to your audience.

We often feel pressured to just get started and do some comms. However, cutting corners on understanding our audience is like building a house without a blueprint. If you commit to interviewing at least a few people from each of your audience groups, your comms will be built on a solid foundation — and will make your audience feel at home with your mission.

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Need help planning or conducting your interviews? We’re happy to help.