Building your target audience
Define who your Simulation's simulated respondents should represent, or base them on your real customers.
Last updated: 2 min read
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The Target Audience step of the Simulation wizard defines who your simulated personas represent.
Two sources of personas
- Synthetic personas — built entirely from the demographic profile you configure below.
- Real customers — hand-picked or randomly selected from the people already in your Synthight workspace, if you'd rather simulate reactions from your actual audience than a generic one.
Note
Synthetic personas aren't random combinations of your settings — age, education, occupation, income, and industry are kept demographically consistent with each other (a persona won't come out as a 22-year-old with a 30-year executive career), so responses read like a plausible person rather than a mismatched grab-bag of traits.
Demographic fields
| Field | Covers |
|---|---|
| Age Range | Minimum/maximum age |
| Gender | Distribution across genders |
| Location | Countries and specific areas |
| Income Level | Income bracket distribution |
| Education Level | Education attainment distribution |
| Occupation | Job roles |
| Industry | Industry the persona works in |
| Interests | Topics/activities they care about |
| Additional Traits | Custom demographic dimensions you define yourself |
| Background | Prior knowledge/context relevant to your simulation topic |
Shortcuts
- AI-generate an audience — describe the audience in plain language and let AI fill in the fields for you.
- Save this audience — name and store it so you can reuse it on future simulations instead of rebuilding it. See Managing saved audiences.
- An AI audience can also be generated from your company profile under Workspace → Company Settings — see Company profile settings.
Next steps
Frequently asked questions
Can Simulation personas be based on my real customers instead of synthetic ones?
Yes — you can hand-pick or randomly select real customers already in your Synthight workspace instead of building fully synthetic personas.
Will synthetic personas end up with unrealistic combinations of traits, like a 22-year-old with 30 years of executive experience?
No — age, education, occupation, income, and industry are kept demographically consistent with each other, so responses read like a plausible person rather than a mismatched grab-bag of traits.
Can I skip filling in the demographic fields manually?
Yes — describe your audience in plain language and use AI-generate an audience to have AI fill in the fields, or generate one from your company profile under Workspace → Company Settings.
Can I reuse a target audience across multiple Simulations?
Yes — use Save this audience to name and store it, then reuse it on future simulations instead of rebuilding it from scratch.
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