The modern public relations practitioner has thousands of ways to reach his or her audience. There are mommy blogs, industry blogs, analyst reports, social media, national dailies, niche market outlets and glossy magazines—not to mention your company’s or client’s own online newsroom.
With so many options available, it’s critical to start with one simple question: Who is your audience? We have been taught to ask this since grade school-level writing courses, and it’s still important.
Our team begins all projects by identifying the audience segments that are most critical to a project or a campaign. We ask: Who do we need to reach to move the needle for our client? The answers can vary widely—a testament to our varied client base and multitude of projects.
Sometimes, the goal is to put a story in front of as many eyes as possible, and an above-the-fold story in the Wall Street Journal or USA Today is the best possible outcome. But there is, understandably, incredible competition to feature your story in these outlets and in many cases, there are a number of smaller, more targeted publications or blogs that would make a great home for your story. And this is where identifying the right audience becomes so important.
Take, for example, the marketing efforts to sign more young people up for the Affordable Care Act (aka, Obamacare). For the system to work, it needed more and more young, healthy people to sign up. To that end, marketing efforts focused intensely on this group. The result? President Obama’s now famous sit-down with Zach Galifianakis on the comedic interview show, “Between Two Ferns,” and a slew of targeted YouTube videos aimed at reaching young viewers. One, for example, featured a number of YouTube celebrities encouraging young adults (their primary audience) to sign up for health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Another featured celebrity moms in an ad chastising young people for not signing up. AdWeek aptly quipped that its tone was, “We’re-making-you-feel-guilty-haha-no-but-seriously.” It was an effective message targeted toward a very specific audience.
Of course, these ads led to a cavalcade of pundits analyzing their impact (“Did they work?” “Was it presidential?”). Nonetheless, they are a great example of content designed to reach a specific audience—a concept that public relations practitioners exercise each day.
In our work for our client Twisted Pair Solutions, for instance, we targeted our outreach to media based on key sales markets for the client. By starting with the most basic question—who do we need to reach?—we were able to develop content and pitches that we knew would resonate with a specific and impactful audience.
Editors and journalists have to ask the same question. Reporters receive a tremendous number of pitches each day. To evaluate which pitches are a good match, they’re going to ask a number of questions including: Will my readers be interested in this story? By defining your audience up front and tailoring your message and content to meet their needs—before you even click “send” on a pitch—you can make sure that you’re sharing content with reporters who want it, and whose readership will be interested.
If you’ve done your homework, it also means that you’re reaching the audience who can have the biggest, most positive impact for your company or client, and that’s a critical piece of any public relations campaign.
You can read more about our work for Twisted Pair Solutions in a previous blog post, here.