Audience-Centric Planning and Personas: A Strategic Approach to Relevancy

Thank you. So yeah, you’ll have seen this already today. Liv already shared the definition of relevance from the dictionary, and I’m going to be talking about relevance a lot as well.

The thing that really strikes me and that I find interesting in the definition here is the example Oxford used: “This film has contemporary relevance.” In the marketing and digital PR world, what relevance means for us is something more like this — “we’re trying to be relevant to the right audience we’re trying to reach, for our clients or for our own business”.

Dialing that into a real digital PR focus, there’s a tension. At the same time, we’re trying be relevant we’re trying to make sure that our own or our client’s link profiles are as broad as possible — we want lots of links from great, relevant sites. But there’s that tension: we want to be relevant, but we also want volume.

We need boundaries — in our personal lives and our work lives. There’s a study I always refer to when I talk about this. In 2006, some landscape architects did a study with a group of kindergarten kids in the U.S. They had them play in a playground without a fence. The kids all stayed really close to the teacher because they didn’t see a clear boundary. Then they played in a fenced playground, and the kids went right up to the fence and played more freely. They were more creative and had a better time.

I talk about this with our digital PR team. I like to give them boundaries so they can push creativity while keeping stories and campaigns relevant.

Liv mentioned this too — the definition of relevance talks about connection and appropriateness. Appropriateness is so subjective. What one person finds appropriate might not be for someone else. It’s difficult to measure.

Two key things help:

1. Having a solid strategy to ensure relevance and meet your goals.
2. Having the right tools or frameworks to measure your work.

As Director of Strategy at Propellernet, I’m going to focus more on strategy.

About 15 years ago, I graduated from Bournemouth University with a multimedia journalism degree. I use that journalistic training every day, especially these questions: Who, What, Why, When, Where, and How (which I wish had a W!). In journalism, you answer these early in a news piece or press release. I apply the same when thinking about audience insights and planning.

Here are 13 questions I use for audience planning:

• Who is your target audience? Who is your current audience? Often there’s a mismatch between the audience a client believes they have and who they’re really reaching.
• What are their concerns around the product or service? What do they care about? What are the biggest barriers to purchase or use? What’s happening in their broader life — finances, home setup, stresses?
• Why do they need or use the product or service? Why would they choose your brand over another?
• When in their lives do they need the product? We’ve worked with PureGym around triggers: getting married, a doctor visit — things that prompt health-related changes. Or maybe there’s no trigger and it’s about frequent use. Mapping daily routines can help see where the brand fits.
• Where do they look for the product? Is location a factor?
• How do they feel about the product? How do they feel about needing to use or buy it? (These are different.)
• How much — is there a price element? Particularly in gifting, people often have budgets.

Where do you get audience insights?

I usually talk about search listening. Search data is rich with insight — it’s what people tell Google when they won’t tell their partner or best friend. It’s an anonymous box. Check your own Google history for proof.

Open an incognito browser and play with seed phrases. For example:

• “Travel insurance when…”
• “Best running shoes for…” — and you’ll get overpronation, plantar fasciitis, shin splints. That tells you it’s a more advanced audience.

Or “Is Spain good for…” — you get diet-related results. These are trending searches.

We also dig into Reddit. For example, someone newly diagnosed with diabetes going abroad might ask Reddit for advice.

We don’t use any formal social listening tools at Propellernet consistently. Often, just dipping into platforms like X (formerly Twitter) or TikTok, using advanced search, gives us rich insights. TikTok search data could be game-changing if it becomes more widely available.

YouGov is great for demographic insights — behaviours, spending, trending topics.
Reviews are also valuable. With clients like Beauty Pie, reviewers share age, gender (optional), skin type. We can segment and analyse feedback to understand how different groups feel.

Let’s talk about a hypothetical client selling travel insurance to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

You’ve got your insights — now what?

We often build briefs for the PR team to generate relevant, KPI-hitting ideas. Traditionally, you’d just paste the insights into a deck.

But now we’re using AI — with precautions. Nothing confidential or unpublished. It’s a tool.

We use Perplexity to turn insights into creative personas. Stories are more engaging than a page of bullet points.

Here’s a prompt example (there’s a full blog post on the Propellernet site if you want it):

You’re a marketer researching audiences for a UK-based travel insurance client. The audience is travellers with medical conditions (e.g. heart issues, diabetes, arthritis, anxiety, epilepsy). They worry about falling ill abroad and understand the importance of good insurance, but cost is a barrier. They often buy insurance online or get recommendations from health-related organisations.

Prompt asks for:

• 3 UK-focused personas
• Unique reason/barrier per persona
• Name, age, job, location, income
• First-person statement explaining why they buy insurance and what’s difficult about it

Persona 1: Margaret (The Cautious Planner)

• 62, Leeds, retired primary teacher, £24k pension, type 2 diabetes.

“I always buy insurance when I book my holiday. The price has gone up since my diagnosis, so I spend hours comparing policies online. It’s frustrating, but I’d never not declare it — my health is too important.”

Persona 2: David (The Reluctant Purchaser)

• 45, Cardiff, warehouse manager, £32k, anxiety and epilepsy.

“The forms stress me out. I’ve considered not declaring epilepsy to save money, but my wife insists we do. We usually go with a policy from the Epilepsy Society even though it’s more expensive.”

Persona 3: Allan (The Adventurous Retiree)

• 68, Edinburgh, retired civil engineer, £35k pension, arthritis and heart condition.

“We’re exploring the world now we’re retired. Insurance costs a lot because of my health, but after a friend’s scare in Thailand, we always budget for it. It’s worth every penny.”

These personas help us brief the team with real people in mind, not abstract insights. With broad but clear boundaries, ideation becomes easier. We get relevant but diverse ideas that match different pain points.

For Margaret, we explore risks and reassurance: top destinations for insurance claims, scams to avoid, tap water safety.
For David, it’s relaxing destinations and returning to safe spots.
For Allan, it’s bucket list travel and off-the-beaten-path inspiration.

One last point: from the leaked Google documents, links that get clicked are ranked more favourably. Engagement matters. So creating stories that truly resonate with specific audiences boosts relevance and performance.

In summary:
Turn insights into stories. Make your audiences feel understood. And keep ideation fresh by rotating personas and angles. Do this, and you’ll keep creating relevant, creative content that performs — again and again.