We live in a data-driven world. This crucial information helps businesses to understand their clients, see how they stack against competitors, and prepare for the future. However, raw data can be complex and dull.
How can we turn it into engaging PR stories?
To create a successful business narrative, you must understand your audience and share pertinent content in your brand voice. Then, you can add relevant data that underscores these concepts. Finally, you must monitor and measure message performance to see if you have hit the mark.
PR professionals must maintain a brand’s reputation with messaging designed for public audiences, such as the press, customers, and other leaders.
Effective Messaging in Your Brand Voice
One of the challenges of effective PR strategies is ensuring that you communicate a valuable message in your official brand voice. To remain competitive, you must have something to say worth promoting. If your company is merely an idea on paper, engaging in PR activities may be too soon.
However, if you are ready to launch or have something new to offer, you have something relevant to communicate. Ad campaigns, press releases, social media, and websites are all content components that help convey that message and establish your brand reputation.
In addition to delivering engaging news, your content must consistently represent your corporate vision and values. Develop your brand so that all communications align, making your company recognizable. You are now ready to craft PR messaging.
Data provides the clarity you need to start building that narrative.
Data Mining for Better Clarity
Data mining is the process of extracting, sorting, and organizing information to discover helpful patterns. It is useful for many applications, such as business forecasting. In PR, data mining helps you find trends that impact your business and customers so you can craft a compelling story.
Likely, your organization has already accrued a significant amount of information. How can you use data mining to extract the information you need? Establish goals by selecting what message you want to communicate to mine the relevant data. For example, if you are launching a new product or service, you will need:
- Raw data on your new product or service (successful testing or performance results);
- KPIs from former launch campaigns (email open rates, product page analytics);
- Media contacts (current and new bloggers and journalists interested in the launch, contact information);
- Launch information (important dates, release data);
- Your customer and email list (purchase history, similar product or service purchases).
After selecting the data, your team will access in-house and external databases and tools to simplify the search. Depending on the data, you might use PR software or apps to mine and clean the data, removing errors and duplicates. Next, format and organize it to be usable. You can do this with dedicated software solutions or simple tools like a spreadsheet.
Once the data is formatted, analyze it to help determine the components you will include in your messaging. Choose what content each target audience receives, such as a press release, email blast, or social media campaign.
Creating Relative Content
Once you’ve determined what to communicate, you must figure out how to present the data. PR strategies may appear to be about your brand. However, the truth is that creating engaging stories is, first and foremost, about your audience. Your content should resonate with the targeted audience while delivering relevant information in your brand voice.
The data you have mined will help you target your audience. When messaging your customers, looking at prior campaigns will tell you what resonated and what did not. If you are targeting prospects, you’ll need to find a way to engage them based on their interests rather than your products or services. For press releases, data analysis includes reviewing which media outlets and contacts are best suited to cover the story with more formal content.
To ensure your content resonates with your audience, create an avatar. Doing so personifies the data about your audience by crafting a person from demographics. Look beyond age range, gender, and buying habits. Where do they engage on social media? What words do they use, and what styles do they embrace? What issues keep them up at night? This perspective can help you craft your current PR content and develop more in the future.
It also makes it easier to write a compelling narrative without dry data like statistics. You probably won’t get much engagement from saying that 75% of users enjoyed your service or product. Craft your PR stories with real-life messaging.
Before crafting content, ask questions like:
- What results did your client get with your solution?
- Were you the first company to do this locally?
- How do corporate changes align with exciting trends, like sustainability or cutting-edge tech?
Answer questions like these with a narrative that appeals to emotion. Your goal is to generate not just interest but excitement and buzz. Keep that in mind when developing content.
After the campaign, track message performance by analyzing the latest metrics.
Monitoring Messaging Performance
After communications are sent, monitor the key performance indicators (KPIs) to analyze message performance. You should review:
- Email click and open rates;
- Social media insights show engagement performance;
- Ad metrics reveal cost per click and return on investment.
A critical metric is website content monitoring. Your website is the one-stop location where interested parties can find detailed information about your company and make purchases. Pay special attention to pages centered on your recent messaging, such as a new product page, including the pathway users took to get there.
You can track information with the following tools:
- Google Analytics provides overall site performance data, such as bounce rates, entry pages, exit pages, etc.
- Google Search Console provides more detailed information on search engine optimization.
- Use Ahrefs or Semrush to establish your backlink profile.
- Keyword tools help you understand your competitor’s SEO strategies.
PR professionals can also use this information to identify topics for future campaigns and capitalize on messages currently trending with site visitors.
Turn Data Into Engaging Stories
To turn dry data into engaging stories, PR professionals must understand their brand voice, properly mine and analyze data, and create relevant content that will resonate with their targeted audience. Follow up by monitoring message performance to improve future communications.
Keeping a watchful eye on analytics will help establish your company as a leader in the marketplace.
