Our Research
Research designed to reveal how trust actually forms in your audience.
Not what people say they value — but how they decide who feels credible enough to engage.
Expert-led businesses succeed or stall based on trust. Yet many decisions about positioning, messaging, and growth are made using assumptions about what audiences want, expect, or believe.
Audience Audit conducts original, quantitative research to replace those assumptions with evidence — revealing how people evaluate expertise, form trust, and decide who they’re willing to listen to or work with, often long before a sales conversation begins.
Research built around decision-making, not demographics
Many studies describe who an audience is. Our research focuses on how audiences think.
We study attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and tradeoffs — the forces that shape perception and behavior. This approach helps leaders understand why messages resonate, why differentiation breaks down, and where trust forms or stalls.
The result is perspective leaders can actually use.
What research makes visible
Clients often use our research to understand:
This isn’t about validating what you already believe.
It’s about seeing what you’ve been missing.
Our research initiatives
Custom research
Tailored studies designed to explore trust, credibility, and decision-making within a specific audience, industry, or strategic context.
Thought leadership research programs
Ongoing initiatives that track how trust, expectations, and decision-making evolve over time — and share findings widely.
Agency Edge
An annual research series (since 2014) conducted with Agency Management Institute, examining how buyers evaluate agencies — and why partnerships succeed or fail.
Agency Core
A nonprofit research initiative founded by Susan Baier and Brian Gerstner, exploring how agency leaders view their own future, capabilities, and readiness for change.
The ROI of Thought Leadership
Research conducted with Predictive ROI examining how thought leadership influences trust, reputation, and decision-making.
Coming in 2026: The Speed of Conversion
A multi-year research initiative with Predictive ROI exploring how prospects decide to buy — and what shortens or slows that timeline.
Research designed for clarity
Our research is quantitative, attitudinal, and designed to surface clear patterns in how people think and decide.
The result isn’t a binder of charts.
It’s perspective leaders can use to make better decisions.
All research is visualized in interactive dashboards and interpreted collaboratively — connecting insight to real decisions across positioning, content, leadership, and growth.
Research that keeps working for you
Insight has the greatest impact when it continues to inform conversation — not just strategy decks.
That’s why we often support research with cornerstone content and ongoing visualizations that keep insight visible, relevant, and trusted over time.
The goal isn’t more research.
It’s sustained understanding.
Built for expert-led businesses
Our research is best suited for organizations where expertise is central to value and trust is central to growth — agencies, consultancies, professional services firms, speakers, authors, and founders whose insight drives their business.
If your success depends on being understood, believed, and trusted, research can help reveal what’s currently invisible.
Why this research is trusted
Our research has been referenced in published books, cited by peers, and invited into industry conversations because it helps leaders think more clearly about trust, differentiation, and growth.