Why finding a balance between brand, journalist and audience is key to PR success
PR strategies work rather differently than direct marketing strategies. What content you include, how you style and format messages and the story angles that appeal to target audiences will change depending on which of these approaches you’re focusing on.
When it comes to media relations, this change partly occurs because of the increased number of parties involved. In other words, when creating a PR strategy, you can’t just think about your brand and audience needs, you also have to consider the needs of journalists too. Adding in this extra factor really switches up the tactics that are most effective - so what do you need to know when it comes to satisfying all three parties?
Brand
The main aim of any promotional strategy is to get your brand’s messaging across. Because of this, to prepare your marketing/PR efforts, you’ll need to know the following about your organisation:
What are the benefits of your product/service for your target customers?
What issues do you help customers overcome?*
What’s your brand’s USP?
Though these are just the basics when it comes to understanding your brand, it’s essential to have these answers ready so you can begin targeted and well-structured promotional activity. However, whilst each of these questions is important, question two is particularly useful when it comes to preparing content for journalists. (More on this, later).
Audience
The other PR/marketing fundamental, naturally, is really getting to grips with your target audience’s needs and wants.
It’s always a good idea to create marketing personas that symbolise your key customers as these help you to understand your customer’s desires, intentions and buying-habits - essentially they allow you to analyse why a certain person would consider your brand. Get specific with them. Once you know these, you’ll have a better understanding of what messages, ideals, and product features resonate most with your customers and what you should focus your PR content/efforts on.
By looking at your customer personas, you can translate your findings into articles/content for PR and marketing by asking:
What do they need to know? (What information are they specifically looking for right now and how does your brand solve these issues)
What don’t they need to know? (You don’t want to overload audiences with too much information - it could overwhelm them or even turn them off your brand. Be sure to whittle out any information that isn’t essential for your key messages to keep audiences engaged).
What do they need to know that they don’t know they need to know? (Remember that your audience may not be experts on a subject and they won’t be aware of some key topics/concepts. Because of this, they may not always be asking questions that will help solve their issues. It’s your job to educate and inform them on these need-to-know areas).
We heard of these three, useful questions from Luria Petrucci on the The Social Media Marketing Podcast and they are a fantastic way to structure your work to make sure you’re delivering value-driven content for your customers.
Journalist
Journalists are the third essential party involved and this is where marketing messages that suit your brand and ideal audiences must be structured to fit the media relations process. When it comes to making your messages appeal to journalists, you must understand the topics they’re willing to write about and what their audiences are interested in.
Journalists don’t like receiving pitches from brands about stories that aren’t relevant to them. You have to understand the topics they want to hear about otherwise they may ignore you.
In this sense, PR pieces can’t be promotional because this won’t serve a journalist’s needs. Unlike direct marketing strategies, you can’t simply publicise your key messages in any way you like - you must appeal to a journalist’s interests to educate and inform their audiences so they’ll mention your work or expertise.
For example, you can tie in your brand’s solution to trending market problems or present data on impactful industry events and then feature an educational take about your solution. These angles are more newsworthy and insightful for journalists, but importantly allow you to present your people as thought leaders.
This is why, when it comes to understanding your brand, getting to grips with question number 2* is so important for media relations - you need to have a good understanding of key market issues so that a journalist is naturally interested, presenting them with appropriate media angles for them and your organisation.
(TIP: to find out what a journalist is interested in/likely to cover, check out previous articles they’ve written or find out about stories they’re currently trying to write - lookup #Journorequest on Twitter, or use subscription-based websites like ResponseSource to find journalists looking to feature particular brands, people or stories).
Combining the parties
Understanding each party involved is essential to getting your PR strategy right. Of course, the main aim is to highlight your brand consistently, but when it comes to media relations, your communication tactics must suit the needs of journalists’ needs too. As well as this, understanding what your ideal customer needs and wants to know depending on whether they’re learning about your brand through direct marketing or media relations should also impact your style, angle and techniques. Combining the wishes of all three parties requires an in-depth knowledge of each group so preparation is key to getting it right.
Want to perfect your PR strategy in the HR market? Having worked with HR journalists for 25 years, we know a thing or two about developing great media relations for brands. Get in touch or sign up for our free PR Audit - we’d love to help.