How do you find out which publications are read by your target audience? What's the process for building a tier 1 media list? Why is it so important, both for aligning PR to business objectives and for getting meaningful media measurement data?
In this Zoom call, Richard Laven (CEO of Yaudience) discusses how PR professionals can identify what outlets their target audience read or follow.
Below is a summary of what Richard and Informing Decisions founder, Craig Hodges, spoke about:
20 sec Craig explains how it was data from Yaudience that really brought home how critical it is to know what your target audience read when it comes to evaluating PR coverage. Restricting the analysis to the media outlets read by the client’s target audience produced a radically better share of voice compared to when their monitoring platform was left to scrape content from millions of websites.
2.40 min Richard says good PR measurement shouldn't be about measuring the number of clippings you have, or the number of mentions within those clippings, or the advertising value equivalent, etc. It’s all about audience reach.
3.05 min The question we need to keep asking ourselves is why do we do PR? Most would say its to get their organisation’s message and brand in front of people who are likely to buy or be influential in the purchase of their product or service. So in order to fulfil that objective the starting point has to be to know which media outlets your target audience read.
7.30 min How do companies access data on what their target audience read?
9.12 min How many outlets should be on a typical company’s target media list?
15 min Could a company undertake audience research itself?
18.55 min Craig and Richard discuss SparkToro and other research tools.
21.45 min Richard reveals his company is now able to take a company's CRM database and create buyer personas/media lists based on that company's customers and prospects.
26.45 min Craig sums up: It is possible to identify how best to reach your target audience without having to rely on guesswork. One can create a target media list based on a specific list of clients and prospects, or more broadly based on job title. This could be done by conducting your own survey of customers, using tools like Yaudience or SparkToro. Informing Decisions' clients can have this data seamlessly integrated into their PR measurement reports.
Going through the process of establishing which outlets are important to your target audience will help:
- Align PR activity with business outcomes
- Help get more meaningful measurement data
- Help set goals and direction for your PR agency
- Save money by making PR outreach more efficient.
An extensive list of off-the-shelf tier 1 media lists covering a whole range of job titles can be found HERE.
Are you interested in finding out exactly what your specific customers and prospects read? Would you like help curating the list of outlets used for PR reporting? If so, complete the form below and we'll be in touch to schedule a no obligation chat.