The 15-Minute AI Research System That Reveals What Problems Your Audience Will Pay to Solve
Systematically discover the exact problems your content should solve to drive business results
Your audience doesn’t care what you want to talk about. They care about what matters to them.
Yet most solopreneurs talk about what they’re excited about, without thinking if the audience actually needs it.
Even if you’re great at what you do, and your ideas are valuable, they’ll still fall flat if you don’t solve a pressing problem your audience faces.
“But how do I know what problems my audience faces that I can solve?”
Glad you asked. That’s exactly what this article is about.
In the last article, we used Deep Research to perform a thorough market research and come up with an ideal reader avatar who is in desperate need of our content and services.
Now, let’s use AI to find out the exact problems they are discussing online so that we can solve them through our content. Because once you articulate the pain your audience is feeling accurately, they’ll almost always buy what you’re offering.
Let’s go!
Reddit + Perplexity: Your Secret Weapon for Deep Audience Research
If you’ve never heard of Reddit, it’s an online community where millions of people gather to have honest conversations about what matters to them.
It’s commonly referred to as “the front page of the internet”, because it’s where the most interesting content surfaces first. If something’s worth talking about, it’s probably being discussed on Reddit.
Because of anonymity, people share thoughts they wouldn’t express on professional networks. They admit their struggles and ask “stupid” questions.
Here’s an actual example of such a conversation:
Such conversations happen every day on Reddit. All we need to do is find these pains and create content to resolve them.
Manually combing through Reddit threads could take hours—time you don’t have. That’s where Perplexity comes in.
What is Perplexity AI?
Perplexity is Google on steroids.
Instead of making you click through multiple websites like Google does, Perplexity:
Goes inside those websites
Extracts the relevant information
Organizes it into a clear answer
Provides direct links to sources
You can use its free plan for our purpose.
Go to perplexity.ai
Toggle the research button
and paste the following prompt
You are an expert social listening analyst. Research Reddit only to map the top pain points and aspirations for my niche and ideal avatar.
<input>
NICHE: [NICHE]
AVATAR: [AVATAR]
</input>
<deliverables>
Section A — Top Pain Points & Aspirations (actionable brief):
• 3–5 ranked pain points for the AVATAR with a 2–3 sentence explanation each.
• For each pain point: 2–3 representative Reddit quotes (with subreddit, date, permalinks), and “What this means for content in [NICHE]” (1–2 tactical ideas).
• 3–5 concise aspirations (what success looks like for this AVATAR), each with 1–2 supporting post links.
Section B — Top 100 relevant Reddit conversations
</deliverables>
<citations>:
Include a source link for every quote and every row in Section B. Use Reddit permalinks only.
</citations>
<output_format>:
Use clear headings and bullet points.
Keep quotes short (≤30 words each).
No filler text. Actionable insights only.
If uncertain, state the limitation and propose the next best query.
Return the full report now.
</output_format>Replace [NICHE] with your niche, and [AVATAR] with your ideal reader avatar.
In case you don’t have these ready, check these out:
Perplexity will research Reddit for your avatar’s pain points and present them in a report like this in a couple of minutes:
Boom! You now have actionable insights into your audience. Save this report and use it along with you avatar document before you create or ideate your next piece of content.
What’s Next?
When you know your audience’s real problems, creating content becomes less of a guessing game and more of a growth engine.
With this 15-minute AI research system, you’ll have a list of pain points and aspirations to guide your writing, and a clear path to creating offers your audience will pay for.
Save your insights into a file, and include them in any conversation with the AI. And watch your content resonate and convert, like never before.
Now that you have nailed the problems your audience faces, let’s craft a strong one-liner to make your brand stand out in front of your audience.
