target audience

Who is your target audience?

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#SillySeasonPR #2

Where do you start with PR? There are important questions to ask and one of them is:

Who is your target audience?

Who are the people you want your message to reach?

Often these are the people that your product or service is aimed at – who you want to buy from you or take some other action:

  • Consumers: young, old or specific interest groups
  • Businesses: large, small, general or specialist
  • A mixture of two or more specific groups

What do they read, watch or listen to?

When you know who they are, look for what they read or view: local or national newspapers, consumer or trade magazines, web sites, blogs or social media.

This will give you an idea of the publications or media to target with your press releases, news and content.

For example, you wouldn’t usually send a press release detailing specialist machinery parts to a local newspaper. The journalists there probably won’t understand what you’re talking about as they are focused mainly on news of interest to the community in the area. The press release would be more suited to a trade publication or web site aimed at specific industry.

Who is your target audience? #SillySeasonPR

#1 #SillySeasonPR actions

Make a list of the target publications, TV and radio programmes, web sites, blogs and social media accounts that cover your target audience(s).

If you have a budget, there are specialist PR services you can pay to distribute press releases direct to relevant journalists. These are especially useful if you have to reach tens, dozens or hundreds of journalists nationally and even internationally. If you don’t have a budget to pay for this and your focus is on a smaller audience, you can identify local newspapers, magazines and radio stations or research those covering a specific industry easily.

Visit a newsagent to see what local publications serve your area or search the internet for specialist publications covering your field. Scan their pages to see what type of content they publish or watch and listen to television or radio programmes to give you an idea of the content they use. If you plan local coverage, you could have a list of one to 10 newspapers, magazines or radio stations. Depending on your industry, you could have the same number or more of trade titles.

Research your target audience on social media by following #hashtags and seeing who posts about your specific topics. You can connect with them to build relationships.

What’s important is to have a list of the main press and media you need to reach.

Tomorrow: What do you want your #SillySeasonPR to achieve?

Use the content and tips in our videos and posts below to boost your business.

Who’s more excited: you or your customers?

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Many journalists receive a lot of press releases and many press releases are remarkably similar to each other. What will make your story stand out from the rest?

Because we all work hard to develop our businesses, achievements seem exciting to us. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be so exciting for anyone else.

Take awards schemes, for example. It could be a big achievement to win an award in a specific sector, but if a journalist receives awards stories from three other businesses at the same time, it’ll seem like just another award accompanied by yet another photo of more people in evening dress.

Grabbing people’s attention and making the story individual is the challenge. Sometimes it can be really easy and at others it can be more of a challenge.

Start by thinking what is likely to excite your customers or target audience: they are the ones you want to impress. It’s also a good idea to analyse the types of story that specific publications publish so you can develop an angle that will fit in with their style.

What’s the point of this? To ensure that any press release or material you produce has got a better chance of success.

Time and effort spent on producing something that is unlikely to grab people’s attention is probably better spent on doing something that will work.

With a bit of thought and practice it becomes easier to identify an interesting angle for your story as you learn what excites your readers and what journalists want to publish. This will improve your chances of obtaining valuable PR coverage.

Pondering, planning and persevering

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What is the point of communicating?

It’s all right, we’re not in a huff, but are asking a serious question: why communicate?

Just like any other business activity, the purpose is to achieve an objective.

At the moment, we’re considering the business objectives of a number of clients. How does a new travel company reach a mass audience in its area on a regular basis without bankrupting itself on adverts? How does an established manufacturer strengthen its position when newcomers claim to offer a fresher, more innovative and responsive service? How does an IT company market a product that is so easy-to-use and effective that many target users just can’t believe how it answers all their dreams?

It’s not just a case of writing down what each business does, how committed their people are and what great service they give, but about trying to think like each of their target audiences, what they need and what will make them respond.

Sometimes the act of writing is quick and easy, because all the necessary preparation – the thinking and planning – has been done before.  Whether we’re copywriting for a brochure or web site or putting together a public relations programme with press releases and case studies, the business objective has to remain the focus at all times.

And doing it thoroughly takes time: thinking through the issues; considering readers’ potential objections; identifying what will attract their interest; developing the drivers that will lead them to take the desired action.

The result we aim for is interesting, lively copy that grabs readers’ attention and steers them towards actions that will achieve each client’s specific business objectives.

As well as aiming to write well, we work to understand our clients as businesses and what they aim to achieve.

And that is why and how we know the point of any communication we produce for our clients.

email: hello@z2z.com
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