How understanding your audience is the key to success when it comes to creating valuable conversations for your organisation.
Genuine insight is vital to communications success. In today’s crowded media space, the potential to be drowned out’ has never been greater. You only have to open a newspaper or turn on your iPad to see endless brands competing for column inches in the news or visibility on social media. And, in this era of fake news’, it can often feel like the rule book is being overturned on a daily basis. In this environment, the ability to cut through the noise, to speak with clarity and certainty as a business is critical. But how do you do this? There are those out there who will talk of shaking things up, making sure all eyes are on you. That, creativity trumps strategy. Others still believe coverage is king’.
That the more times you say something, the more likely it is to be heard. Prompted by a need to justify budgets or a lack of understanding about how customers make purchasing decisions, they focus not on the quality of coverage generated but the quantity. On social media commentary at the expense of social media engagement.Yet no matter how much coverage is achieved, no matter how many tweets coverage in the wrong title, seen by the wrong audience, that lacks a clear call to action, will deliver little value for your brand. Instead great PR and marketing recognises the power of insight and the importance of being audience-led. Gone are the days of being able to categorise your PR and marketing campaigns as either businessto-business or business-to-consumer. Each and everyone of your customers is an individual. They are a consumer, an employee, a stakeholder, each with their own myriad of views. When you look at a great PR or marketing campaign, more often than not, it will be a potent mix of both strategy and creativity.
Rooted in methodical, analytical insight, brought to life with a sprinkling of imagination and creative genius. But the most effective of these campaigns will always start by understanding your audience. Understanding how they behave, the issues they care about and the challenges they face. In this way you are able to understand what truly motivates your customers. To identify the messages, tactics and channels that will be most effective in reaching them, the influencers whose opinion they trust the most. To communicate with them on an individual basis.
At Karol we call this process forensic PR. We dig deep to establish the real issues that can often thwart a client’s communications objectives. It underpins our philosophy that value, trumps volume. We use it to help you have a point of view, a purpose, an opinion that reflects who and what you are as a business. We work to forensically understand your audiences, enabling us to develop campaigns that prompt real behaviour change. Forensic PR is the search for a catalyst. Something small, a tipping point or a nub of an idea. Something often overlooked by others, something that will change the future of your organisation. It requires unconventional thinking. The conviction that we all have an untold story to tell. It is the ability to create the conversations that are the most valuable to your organisation, to generate genuine results. It’s why we are the most awarded agency in the North.
To find out more about the value that forensic communications could bring to your organisation, please contact Karol Marketing on 0191 2657765 or Stefan@KarolMarketing.com. Or why not tweet us @KarolMarketing
