Audience

The Essentials:

Knowing Your Audience

Content Strategy Framework Lesson

2/6

This module guides you in how to identify who you’re trying to reach and deeply understand their specific needs and spiritual starting points. By learning to build personas and user stories, you will discover how to shift your digital strategy from generic broadcasting to creating empathetic, highly personalized user journeys.

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, making disciples requires engaging people where they spend their time: online. However, generating internet traffic does not automatically equal spiritual impact. It’s possible to generate thousands of clicks without moving a single heart toward Jesus.

The Content Strategy Framework guides us toward purposeful digital activities. Each component of the framework connects to your audience. So before you can set goals, create content, distribute it or analyze your success, you must start at the very beginning: Audience.

What Does “Audience” Mean?

In the context of digital ministry, the word “audience” can feel corporate, distant or transactional. However, that is the exact opposite of what we intend. We define an audience as a specific group of people we seek to serve, to understand and to help take their next step toward Jesus.

An audience does not mean consumers, targets or anonymous crowds. Instead, it means people with shared questions, contexts and spiritual starting points. Defining an audience reminds us to center everything we do around the people we aim to serve, honoring all people as individuals Jesus loves and died for.

Why Do We Focus on Audience-Centricity?

A foundational principle of digital strategy is this: If you build a journey for everyone, it reaches no one.

Think about it. Online content that is not created for a specific audience is, by definition, generic. And generic messages can appear vague and irrelevant to your specific audience. Because of that, generic messaging won’t resonate as well with your audience’s needs, challenges or desires.

This is why knowing and understanding your audience(s) is an essential part of everything we do — offline and online. We learn about our audiences so that we can create and curate content that connects deeply with who they are. Content is not a microphone to proclaim your ministry’s message with more volume; rather, it’s an opportunity for you to bring genuine value to your audience.

Jesus perfectly demonstrated audience-centricity. He spoke differently to the religious scholar Nicodemus (John 3) than He did to the woman at the well (John 4). Jesus knew their distinct contexts, backgrounds, desires and felt needs. In His interactions with people, we see Him speak to the heart of who they are and where they are spiritually.

It’s possible this is already intuitive to you because of your in-person relationships. For example, you speak differently to a university student than to a business leader. You speak differently to a child than to your grandparents. Your word choice likely changes based on whether the person is a mature Christian or is someone who has never heard of Jesus. We must do the same online.

To replicate Jesus’ approach online, we must design our strategies empathetically. Listening deeply and adapting thoughtfully shifts our posture from “convincing” to “connecting.” True audience-centricity means finding the “sweet spot” — the exact place where your audience’s felt needs intersect with the biblical truth and community your ministry offers.

We further discuss the “sweet spot” and communication topics in the Content Section.

How Does Audience-Centricity Connect to the Content Strategy Framework?

Goals

You cannot set an effective goal without first considering your specific audience and what will bring them value. For example, if your audience is spiritually “Uninterested,” you shouldn’t immediately invite them to a Bible study. Instead, provide a safe space for them to talk or ask questions. By keeping your audience at the center, your goals remain focused on serving real spiritual needs.

Content

The audience you want to engage should determine the content you create. For example, does your audience prefer watching short videos or reading articles?

Distribution (Sharing Methods)

The success of your distribution strategy depends on whether you meet your audience where they already spend their time. The most beautiful, creative content won’t succeed if you share it on a platform your audience doesn’t use.

Analysis

Analytics serve as the voice of your audience. Through an audience-centric lens, data is not just about numbers. It provides vital clues about the audience’s behavior, interests and pain points.

Two Crucial Questions to Ask

As you begin to formulate your strategy, you need to answer two vital questions.

What audience are you trying to reach?

Who do you want to connect with? Before you think about your message, you need a clear picture of who you are designing it for. Are they first-semester university students feeling overwhelmed by stress? Are they young professionals in a fast-paced work culture feeling isolated?

What audience(s) are you already reaching?

If you already use digital platforms such as social media or YouTube, or if you have a website, you may assume you know who’s looking at your content. However, you must evaluate your current data and analytics to verify this.

For example, in many countries, specific audiences are interacting with our digital properties such as national ministry sites. Identifying who is already coming to your platforms provides an opportunity to journey alongside real people who’ve already shown interest.

How Can You Practically Learn About Your Audience(s)?

To practically learn and understand your audiences, we’ve developed resources and a series of activities for you and your teammates. We also walk you through other methods that can aid your research. Below, we provide an overview of each resource and activity, along with a way for you to interact with each of them.

The Audience Map

To deeply understand the spiritual realities of your audience, you can utilize a tool called the Audience Map.

The Audience Map is a framework built from thousands of hours of interviews with real people across six continents, cataloging their faith journeys, experiences and sentiments. It categorizes people into distinct spiritual stages, ranging from “Unaware” and “Hostile” to “Seeking,” “Growing” and “Multiplying.”

The Audience Map helps you understand your audience so you can create or curate relevant content that meets their needs and helps them move toward Jesus.

To start using the Audience Map:

Review the Stages: Spend time reviewing the stages to find the one that most closely aligns with the audience you’re trying to reach.
Listen to Their Voice: Read the specific section detailing what people in that stage are saying in their own words. Also read the “Insights” section.

Identify Movement Patterns: Pay special attention to the “Movements” section. This critical area explains what specific triggers cause your audience to move toward God, and what obstacles push them away from God.

Empathy Map

While the Audience Map gives you a spiritual baseline, an empathy map guides you in understanding your audience’s daily life, demographics and struggles. It shifts your focus from what you want to say to what they need to hear.

To start a simple empathy map, divide a piece of paper into four quarters that you will fill out from your audience’s perspective. Think about real people you know who fit your audience’s description.

Each of the four sections will represent one of the following:

Says — What do they say out loud? What specific words do they use to express themselves?
Thinks — What do they think or process internally that they might not share with others?
Feels — What emotions and feelings do they experience (e.g., anxious, hopeful, lonely)?
Does — What actions do they take? What are their daily habits or behavior patterns?

Creating a User Story

A user story, written strictly from your audience’s perspective, identifies the specific challenge or need your audience has and highlights what they are trying to achieve. An important note: You are not writing from the Cru/CCCI perspective. The user story helps you identify your audience’s needs and desires, not what the ministry wants to communicate to them.

Here’s the pattern of a user story:

As a [person on a spiritual journey]…

I want to [perform an action or discover something]…

So that [I can achieve my goal of _______ ].

Let’s say your audience falls into the “Open” stage on the Audience Map and they are willing to learn but have doubts. Your user story might look like this:

As someone who is curious about the reliability of the Bible,

I want to learn the reasons why people consider it trustworthy,

so that I can decide if I believe what the Bible says.

Understanding Your Audience: A Combined Worksheet

To bring all of these concepts together, we’ve created the Guide to Understanding Your Audience (PDF). The activities in the worksheet slow you down and invite you to comprehensively step into your audience’s shoes.

The worksheet combines these four key steps:

Review the Audience Map: Reviewing stages, quotes, insights and movements.
Identify your audience: Selecting the stage that aligns with your ministry goals.
See from their perspective: Utilizing empathy mapping concepts to answer questions about your audience’s pain points, desires, daily activities and spiritual backgrounds.
Build a persona: Synthesizing your research into a “persona” — a semi-fictional representation of your ideal audience member.

Create a user story: Writing a brief narrative from your audience’s perspective about a goal they’d like to achieve or a struggle to overcome.

Other Methods of Researching Your Audience

To get you thinking or kickstart your audience research, you can use the following:

Google Trends: See what people in your country are entering into Google’s search bar.
Media Usage Reports from We Are Social (global and country-by-country reports): Understand social media usage globally and in your country.
The Audience Map combined with prompting an AI tool.
Quick surveys or interviews with people in your audience. Talking directly to your audience provides insights you may not have learned elsewhere.
An AI prompt, like the example below, to help you develop interview questions for your audience.

“I’m conducting a user research interview with [your target audience including relevant persona and Audience Map information] to better understand their values, motivations, behaviors and decision-making related to [topic, e.g., faith, spirituality, leadership, personal development, finance, etc.].

I want to explore how these attitudes and values influence their behavior on digital platforms (especially social media), including what content they consume, trust, ignore or act on.

Please generate 10 open-ended, UX-style interview questions that:

Focus on behaviors and real experiences (not on hypotheticals alone)
Explore motivations, emotional drivers and mental models
Uncover content preferences and credibility signals
Help inform digital strategy decisions
Avoid leading or biased wording

Include suggested follow-up prompts for each question to help go deeper.”

A real life example of this:

“I’m conducting a user research interview with a university student in Montenegro to better understand their values and motivations around leadership and personal development. I want to explore how these values influence their behavior on social media, including what content they consume, trust and act on.

Generate 10 open-ended UX-style interview questions that focus on real behaviors, motivations, emotional reactions, credibility judgments and digital habits. Include suggested follow-up probes for each question.”

A Final Thought

As we’ve discussed, your audience is the foundation of everything you will build.

By intentionally moving away from aimless broadcasting, and by leaning into audience-centricity, you ensure that your digital strategies are not just adding to the internet’s noise. Instead, you’re providing empathetic, personalized pathways that help real people discover and follow Jesus.

We encourage you to prayerfully work through the activities listed above, as everything you do will begin with your audience. Then explore the other components of the Content Strategy Framework.

When you finish, you’ll be well on your way to creating user journeys to reach your audience.