How to Keep Your Public Relations Focus on Your Audience – Info Branding

3 Techniques that Keep Your Public Relations Efforts Targeted on the People You are Trying to Reach

Your team is a hard-working crew. They work tirelessly developing concepts, perfecting new services, and producing new products. When the project is finally complete, there are often hand-shakes, atta-boys, and high fives to celebrate a job well done. It’s easy to think that hard work is just for your business, but it’s not. It’s for your audience. It can be tough to keep public relations laser-focused on your target market.

Sometimes we get lost in our own ideas. The following techniques are designed to get you outside of your bubble and inside your target audience’s lives.

1. Build a relationship

This is key to keeping a solid public relations focus on your audience. Get to know them as people. Don’t just gather stats and data. Start a relationship. (for more on your relationship with your audience, check out this blog on talking directly to them.)

Example: If you design tech tools for healthcare workers and patients and you are a 24-year-old male, you are not the target audience. You might have trouble seeing through the eyes middle aged caregiver, so find one!

Find a person who represents who you are trying to help and have an actual conversation. It doesn’t have to be formal. Get coffee or chat via the phone. Just make sure you really know who you are trying to reach.

2. Ask for feedback

Once your company’s new service or concept is out there, know how it was received. This may reach more into formal focus group territory for a larger project, but there are ways to get smaller nuggets of feedback.

Pro-Tip: Social media is a great tool for gauging feedback. Facebook, for instance, let’s you view insights. After digging through those, you can also reach out to audience members and ask. Also, read your reviews and open a dialogue with satisfied and dissatisfied customers. You’re obviously a fan of the work, so you need a fresh perspective.

Combing through social media and reviews is a great step, but you may also want to try a pointed survey. Giving the audience a voice is a wonderful way to retool your marketing plan without scrapping everything. Little tweaks here and there could make all of the difference when trying to connect with your audience.

3. Correcting a Mistake

It’s easy to blame others when things don’t work out. If a tactic fails you may think, “they don’t know what they want!” Sound familiar? If so, you may want to reevaluate your thought process and dump that ego. Sometimes the blame lies with you.

Take responsibility for mistakes and try again; a lesson in humility can lead to great improvements in your company and brand message. If you’re getting a lot of negative feedback, find out why.

Correcting issues is great public relations. Not everyone will be a fan of your new dress line or experimental coffee brew. A few bad reviews can be expected—but when those naysayers outnumber the fans—you have a problem.

Don’t continue to get bad PR because you’re in love with your new product. Your audience has to be in love with it. Keep the public relations focus where it belongs.

RUSSO is a strategic branding agency that uses consumer insight to change the conversation; forming emotional connections with the target audience. To learn more, click HERE to subscribe to our podcast.