As the
press conference came to an end, the CEO and the Corporate Communications boss walked
to my table; they had one mission, to give me the list of the media houses that
they wanted the story to be featured. They were keen on the two top publications,
one mass market television channel and several vernacular stations.
To cut the
long story short, the client was trying to change my much targeted media event
to an irrelevant general media one.
What is the
essence of broadcasting news about a newly launched elevator system on a
vernacular station? I pondered.
One of the
most essential components of PR is not only understanding your target audience
but understanding them in a better way.
To understand your target audience better, you should know who your target
audiences are. For example if you own a firm dealing in beauty products then
you should analyze which age segment your beauty products cater to. After
analyzing this only you can use media in a better way. A slight mistake in this
could create havoc for your company.
To
understand your target audience better, there in need to clearly understand their
current attitudes, opinions as well as interests. This could be known through
market research and by watching the trend of the public demand. On the basis of
these information, you should formulate public relations campaign in such a way
that it caters to their attitudes, opinions, and interests. It is very
important to know your target audience right from the inception of the project
and the more you know about your target audiences, the better impact you can
create on them through your PR campaign. Knowing your target audience better
helps you in the execution of your next step in your PR plan i.e. targeting the
right media channel. For example if your beauty product is an anti wrinkle
beauty cream then your communiqué should not be targeting One FM
or Homeboyz radio which are mediums
with a young audience base, as this will
not help your cause.
After
knowing your target audience and preparing a list of potential media targets
for your PR campaign, you should rate each of media you are going to use on the
basis of how good it fits with your target market, and then go for the ones
that fit best to your need. You should not attach much importance to their
popularity or circulation.
Young PR Kenya Speak; Customers are the backbone of any
business, so knowing the target audience well will help you to gain the optimum
results from your PR campaigns. It would also help you in generating a positive
impact of the organization on not only the regular customers, but also on
potential customers.
