Since the dawn of PR as a profession, the sector has been fighting for the right to exist. Amid competing budgets and short executive attention spans for the next bright, shiny thing, there is a higher degree than most disciplines of the ‘What-have-you-done-for-me-lately?’ mentality. This includes many CEOs, companies and organizations.
If you’ve been considering how to reframe PR functions as part of a broader business strategy, here are five ways to stay focused:
Alignment with Purpose and Values
1. Align Tactical Data Needs and Decisions With Purpose and Values
Content strategy should reflect corporate identity. In turn, a clear set of core values should define corporate identity. Values set the tone for business goals and objectives.
Your job is to make sure PR tactics fit these values. Be sure to take advantage of access to executives who can confirm how well a program fits with the organization’s larger vision.
Strategies that include influencers or brand ambassadors, for example, are particularly important to assess for appropriate synergy.
“Whether you are selecting an influencer based on reach and engagement, or evaluating the influencer’s storytelling opportunity for your brand, it’s critical that the influencer aligns with the brand’s value, tone, and equity,” said Lauren Ludlow, associate director, digital + influencer marketing at Small Girls PR.
She recommends vetting and background research that includes scrubbing digital platforms and a full background check. Make sure your digital team tracks influencer behavior on current and previous social media posts, checks for FTC disclosures, and employs Google or other searches to understand an influencer’s social history. Searching an influencer’s fan sites and private groups also can help avoid surprises.
Bring on The Geek-Out
2. Invest in Analytics
Digital media’s abundance of metrics has created a veritable geek-out by the profession, and for good reason. It’s powerful to have real data reflect the impact of your strategies and tactics.
At the same time, you can’t view the science of data as its own means to an end. It exists within PR, not exclusive of it. While you employ data and analytics to gain insights about your target market and how best to approach it, be sure to avoid losing sight of the artful, substantive, human relationship-building that should be at the core of your work as a communicator.
Olay, in partnership with influencer Sarah Hyland and its PR agency, created a waterproof bath book of photographs. Its goal was to encourage women to slow down, unplug, and reclaim bath time. The book featured essays on transformation from Hyland and other influencers to inspire women to have the confidence to be unapologetically bold and true to themselves.
The campaign resulted in influencer coverage, consumer engagement, and top tier press results in outlets such as Refinery29, PopSugar, and Allure. What made the team believe the campaign for a transforming bodywash would be shareworthy? Analytics. Its research indicated its audience would respond to the message and that it could gain media coverage in top target outlets.
Another example of analytics helping to craft relationship strategies with heartstrings comes from Omni Vision of Nashville, TN. Data from Omni’s PR partner, Fletcher Marketing PR, Data showed an industry need for stronger diversity recruitment. This resulted in Omni Visions’ campaign to recruit more foster parents for abused and neglected children. The campaign featured emotionally powerful videos of diverse foster families, including the LGBTQ community. It resulted in explosive growth in lead-development in geographically targeted areas. Data also informed the effort about targeting.
Avoid Limits on Data
3. Use Data Before, During and After Campaigns
A data-driven program helps craft accurate audience segmentation and geographic targeting for the brand’s call-to-action—especially if generating a documented lead-development funnel is the main expectation. Audience and media-use data also help inform a mix of paid, earned and owned media that’s right-sized and managed to the available budget.
Don’t shy away from collaborating closely with marketing or IT and any necessary digital-development service providers. Collaboration can help determine the necessary back-end tools that will help capture inbound prospect- and customer-information databases. This investment can help you course-correct shortfalls in your strategy mid-stream and may later prove the effectiveness of your strategy.
Stuck without a budget for a sophisticated analytics plan? Google Analytics offers plenty of free tools to get you started.
Use Data But...
4. Leverage Industry Insights to Shape Objectives, but Think Critically and Use Caution
You don’t always need to spend a lot on research programs. Much of the work may already be done for you. Published industry trends can bolster your argument if you’re trying to get senior leadership on board.
Nonprofit organizations that rely on donor dollars might make use of something like Graham-Pelton’s Giving USA 2019 report, which offers insights on trends in U.S. giving and makes recommendations to those who plan donor relations programs.
Trying to figure out the optimal number of hashtags to use on Instagram or understand how Facebook’s new News Feed algorithm will change what Facebook users see? Don’t forget about Hubspot—the holy grail of free marketing insights that could shape decisions big and small.
Or if you’re a PR pro working on internal communication, you might benefit from a perusing of the latest Edelman “Trust Barometer.” With a focus on quality of the employer-employee relationship, Edelman’s latest report suggests that employees expect CEOs to take a stand on social issues, trust in social media as a source of information continues to be lower than traditional media, and women are less likely to trust businesses than men.
Original Research
But it’s also important to discern when proprietary research is warranted to avoid PR mistakes that could cost even bigger bucks.
For example, although studies speak to the upsides of social-purpose marketing, Weber Shandwick’s “The Purposeful CEO” 2018 study says that 89 percent of Americans believe “CEOs speaking out on hotly debated current issues” poses a risk of negative outcomes. These range from customer criticism on social media to negative media coverage and boycotts. It may be lower risk to stay silent.
So don’t wade blindly into high-stakes messaging campaigns based entirely on someone else’s work that’s not tailored to your cause and diverse stakeholders. Make the case for original market research when merited, especially if you are considering high-risk messaging.
Best Practices
5. Connect Your Program to Best Practices
Every PR professional should be a voracious reader of case studies and data-based trend reports about large-scale audience behaviors, such as generation-driven media adoption and use. In addition, seek out articles and reports that provide insights on micro-trends. These change with great regularity, for example market shifts and digital platform use.
Before developing a campaign, don’t forget to closely study your direct competitors’ recent campaigns. A detailed analysis of competitors’ social media presence and the numbers underpinning their respective online audiences may tell you quite a bit about the effectiveness of their public-facing strategies (or, if they even have a strategy).
Vanilla Copycats
It’s remarkable how, in some industries, nearly every competitor has simply played “copycat” with branding and promotional communications. The result: pure vanilla, with no brand saying much of anything. In such cases, seize the opportunity to overtake competitive share-of-voice with stronger creativity, visual presence and thought leadership.
Compare your own past earned-media performance with that of competitors through a keyword-search content analysis. This work can yield fresh insight about story angles. Those campaigns that have been successful might merit a new twist for this year’s pitch calendar, and you’re more likely to notice ideas that would be stale retreads. Content analysis is also vital to examine when, why and how past crisis incidents have occurred that might underpin negative legacy reputational impact.
In sum, research and data in all their forms–whether quantitative or equally rich perspectives of qualitative insight–prove essential to all strategic public relations campaigns.
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