Best for
- Teams relying on old personas or internal assumptions
- B2B marketers preparing messaging before formal interviews are complete
- Product marketers looking for the language buyers use in public, with clear limitations
Collect current public buyer questions, reviews, discussions, and category language, then build a source-linked pain report that shows what people actually describe, how often themes recur, and what still needs direct customer validation.
A buyer-pain report with evidence sources, recurring language, situation and consequence themes, confidence, unanswered questions, and implications for research and messaging.
Quick view
Check the audience, core tools, and access before you start the detailed steps.
Best for
Core tools
3 tools used across the workflow.
Access
Preview the open steps, then unlock the remaining implementation details and prompts.
Why this works
Public market evidence can expose vocabulary, questions, and recurring frustrations quickly, but it is not a substitute for representative customer research. The workflow keeps provenance and sample limitations visible, then uses the patterns to sharpen hypotheses and interview questions rather than declaring a new persona from scraped comments.
Expected results
Evidence provenance
Every usable pain item retains a public source URL
The report remains auditable and distinct from internally invented persona language.
Method honesty
Theme counts include source diversity and sample limitations
The workflow does not convert a convenience sample into a market-prevalence claim.
Validation path
Material themes become neutral customer research questions
Public evidence sharpens primary research rather than replacing it.
Step-by-step workflow
The first 2 steps are open. Pro unlocks the remaining steps, copy-paste prompts, pro tips, tool-by-tool setup guidance, and implementation details.
45 min
45 min
Write the buyer role, situation, problem space, market, and the assumptions currently embedded in your persona or messaging. Turn those assumptions into questions that public evidence could inform, such as triggers, consequences, current workaround, objection, or vocabulary. In Google Sheets, record what this method cannot establish, including market prevalence or private buying behavior. Review the brief with product marketing before collecting evidence.
A buyer-research brief with explicit hypotheses and method limitations.
Research is more useful when it can disprove an assumption. Do not start with a persona you are trying to confirm.
60 min
60 min
Use Apify to collect approved public sources such as reviews, public forums, Q&A, relevant social discussions, or community pages, keeping source URL, date, platform, and context. Avoid private communities or unnecessary personal profile data. Balance the sample across several source types where possible so one platform’s culture does not become the “voice of the market.” Manually verify source quality and mark vendor-generated or promotional content separately.
A dated multi-source evidence set with provenance and source-type labels.
A hundred comments from one subreddit are still one community context. Diversity of sources matters more than raw row count.
Pro workflow preview
Previewing 2 of 6 steps
Get the remaining 4 steps, copy-paste prompts, pro tips, tool-by-tool setup guidance, and ongoing workflow and prompt releases.
$9/month
Related workflows
Continue with workflows that share a similar GTM motion, category, or tool stack.
A source-linked account brief with company changes, public themes, existing CRM context, relevance hypotheses, open questions, and a human-reviewed outreach angle.
A concise weekly LinkedIn intelligence digest with source links, argument summaries, recurring themes, useful disagreements, and ideas for research or response.
A recurring sentiment and reaction log with source posts, coded themes, confidence, representative examples, content implications, and human-approved follow-up decisions.