What Are Personas in Gumshoe?
The Personas Page highlights audience segments that are most likely to ask questions about your brand in AI-generated search. These segments represent different types of customers or decision-makers searching for information related to your products or services.
Each persona reflects a pattern of interests, behaviors, and search intent. By understanding who is asking about your brand and why, you can better align your messaging, content strategy, and brand positioning to meet your audience’s needs.
Personas matter because AI models are designed to satisfy the user’s intent, which means they’ll often tailor responses based on who they think is asking. If you or your team tried to run this research manually, it could take weeks, and the models would likely shape answers to match your perceived expectations. Gumshoe uses personas to simulate realistic audience identities, framing prompts as if they’re coming from that specific user type (e.g., “Hi, I’m a busy mom…”). This approach ensures the insights you get reflect how AI would respond to actual customer queries, not your own.
Why Personas Matter
- Identify the audience segments AI models associate most with your brand.
- Understand the motivations and behaviors behind different customer types.
- Tailor your messaging, strategy, and positioning to match user intent.
- Align content more closely with the questions and needs of your target audience.
- Get more realistic and accurate responses from AI Models.
How are Personas Generated?
Personas in a Gumshoe report are created through a proprietary diagnostic process. We query multiple AI models and return a consensus on the types of users they associate with your brand. These personas aren’t pulled from real-world customer data because AI models don’t make that information available, but instead reflect how the models themselves picture the audiences most likely to engage with you.
Think of them as a snapshot of the assumptions AI is already making. Gumshoe specifically asks models to draw on their own learned experience, so the results aren’t random guesses, but informed signals based on the patterns and context they’ve been trained on.
You can (and should) edit personas to reflect your actual target audience. But the automatically surfaced personas are a rare window into how AI currently perceives your customers, and the only way to measure those associations in real time.
When you run your completed Gumshoe report, the models are queried again, fresh and individually, to show how they would respond to each persona in a real-world environment.
How to Add a Persona of Your Own to a Report
- Click the plus sign to add a persona
- Enter a Persona name/title
- Choose to have Gumshoe generate a description
- OR paste in a description of your own
- Add the persona to the report by clicking "Save"
How to Edit or Customize Personas when Creating Reports
- Click "See More" at the bottom of each Persona box to expand its details.
- Press the trash icon to remove a persona from your list.
- Press the pencil icon to edit the Persona's details.
- To add a new persona manually, enter a name and description, then click “Add Persona.”
- To have Gumshoe generate a description, type a name in the Persona Name field and click. “Suggest”. If the description works for you, click “Add Persona.”
- Click “Continue” when ready to move on to the next step.
How to Edit or Customize Personas in Existing Reports
- Click on "Manage Personas" in the left-side menu or in the top right "..." menu.
- Click "See More" at the bottom of each Persona box to expand its details.
- Press the trash icon to remove a persona from your list.
- Press the pencil icon to edit the Persona's details.
- To add a new persona manually, enter a name and description, then click “Add Persona.”
- To have Gumshoe generate a description, type a name in the Persona Name field and click. “Suggest”. If the description works for you, click “Add Persona.”
- Click “Continue” when ready to move on to the next step.
- The changes will be applied to the report after the report is run again.
How Can I Reuse or Import Personas from Previous Reports?
You can reuse previous Personas from any Gumshoe report within your personal account or organization.
- Click "Add Persona."
- Select "Import from existing."
- Choose "My Personas" for Personas in your Personal account or "My Organization" for Personas across all reports in your organization.
- Click "Import" next to the Persona you'd like to add.
Why Personas Improve Results
Each persona helps clarify how AI models interpret your audience. Strong persona targeting improves the relevance of your summaries, questions, and cited content in the report.
To read about persona questions and the next step in building your report, click here.