Communicators agree vague potential impressions metrics are quickly becoming irrelevant because they don’t provide business value. But how can PR pros demonstrate their contribution to business goals and become more strategic business partners is the question that naturally follows – especially when their executives are accustomed to seeing potential impressions grow ad infinitum.
One way to correlate PR activities to your organization’s goals is to conduct demographic and psychographic audience analysis of your earned media coverage to ensure you’re reaching your target potential audience, not millions of anonymous people. Leverage demographic and psychographic analysis in the following ways:
Demographic Audience Analysis
Demographic audience analysis segments your audience by data points such as age, gender, income, education, marital status, and political affiliation. Compare your readership on these demographics to see if you’re getting coverage in front of people that you are trying to get to take action.
For example, a non-profit organization benefitting children is trying to increase their millennial donor base. They can understand exactly how much of their earned media is currently reaching not just millennials but those above a certain income threshold with children. Using this information they can determine if they need to adjust their outreach plan.
Psychographic Audience Analysis
Psychographic audience analysis segments your audience by data points such as social and consumer behaviors and future buying intent. This allows you to get extremely granular with your targeting, especially when combined with demographic audience analysis.
Say you work for a utility company and want to get coverage about your organization’s R&D in clean energy in front of a more liberal audience, whereas you want conservative readers to see your message against a certain energy industry regulation. Use psychographic audience analysis to target a specific segment down to the key message.
Benchmark your reach to this segment and improve penetration over time using insights from campaigns as you continually perform demographic and psychographic analysis. It might surprise you what demographics and behaviors drive increased relevant web traffic, report downloads, and other conversions.
Influencer Identification
Use demographic and psychographic audience analysis by outlet to proactively pitch outlets and authors who aren’t covering you or are only covering your competitors, but reach the audience you want to target.
Demonstrating your ability to reach relevant audiences is a business conversation your C-suite will want to have and appreciate your effort to contribute to business goals.
