I spend a lot of time with public relations professionals. The two topics that I get requested to speak about the most are influencers and impact. I’m often asked ‘what ideas will fly with online journalists’? ‘What creative will bloggers love’? Very rarely, am I asked ‘how can I better connect my client to their target audience’. That worries me.
Why aren’t more PR’s worried about what the target audience want, how they’re motivated and what they feel? Isn’t that the point — relating to the public?
When we did PRs stop caring about what happened beyond gaining coverage and making people aware?
I believe the answer is — When the platforms changed and it became so difficult to measure beyond the awareness stage!!
It used to be so much easier….
We get the front page of The Sun. The rest of the week our client sees an immediate increase in sales. We made the target audience aware and they bought — bingo!
Then it all started to change…. Bloggers arrived on the scene. No problem, we thought, we’ll treat them like journalists. Social networks became more prominent and Joe Bloggs started to become influential! Then, Google said they were tracking third party recommendation to decide rankings. All of a sudden we not only have multiple media platforms to understand we also have hundreds of new influencer groups within them! Headache!
So what did we do? We stuck with what knew best and continued to measure awareness. Trying to look at anything beyond that will be a nightmare! Plus, it sounds like it would suit the digital guy — he’s good at that stuff.
And so, we got REALLY good at measuring awareness. We’ve packaged it up and counted it in all sorts of ways… • Let’s count brand mentions, logo and images • How many media types did we get? • Opportunities to see? • How far did we reach?
• AVE?
The PR industry got so good at measuring awareness over the years we stopped considering what on earth the target audience did next! And if we’re not curious about their movements and actions after they read our coverage and saw our brand mention why would be bother to really get to know them in the first place. Maybe we should have re-branded Journalist Relations?
But this isn’t right. It is our duty to our clients to relate to their public and carry their message. We just need to be brave, up-skill, understand the new platforms and influencers and get back to our roots and relate to the public again.
If the PR industry don’t start caring about the whole customer journey, budgets will be given to the digital industries that do care about what happened next.
Going beyond measuring awareness isn’t new, AMEC and the PRCA did warn us about seven years ago when they formed the Barcelona Principles. What they didn’t do is tell any of us HOW to prove a change in target audience behaviour or prove business impact. Helpful! Don’t worry; I’m not going to be that annoying person to moan about the state of our industry and not actually do anything about it. I want us all to strive for better insights and report on the full impact of our hard work and ultimately get back the budgets that are our rightfully ours!
So here it is everyone! Here’s what really happens after you make your target audience aware………..
Google watches nearly every piece of online coverage you gain for your client. This, in Google’s eyes is a huge recommendation of your client’s content. The more influential the journalist, blogger or social influencer the bigger the reward from Google. Your PR campaigns are essentially having two hits of impact:
- The first is with the mass target audience
- The second is with a very targeted ‘in market’ crowd looking for your client’s service and products
Your editorial coverage is holding your clients site at the top of the results for our ‘in market’ public to see. They click. Bingo. That’s real business results.
Your PR team is making this happen. Be more curious about the whole customer journey and report on ALL of your results. Don’t leave it up to the digital guy to show off your PR team’s hard work.
