By Queen Nwabueze

In generating a strategic public relations plan, determining your audience is easier said than done. If you are a public relations professional, chances are that you had struggled at one point or another trying to think out who exactly your campaign is meant for. It happens to everyone – the finest of professionals, inclusive.

Stakeholder research in public relations is very tricky. In planning, you might think that your business appeals to one particular sector of the society whereas in implementation, your reach could go much further touching the lives of persons you never saw in the plan. It could be worse – not reaching the identified target audience right in the plan.

All these are much ado about something: That a deep understanding of the audience of all communications rollouts is very critical to the success of any marketing campaign. That’s true. If you remember that you only get to see your stakeholders in their elements when marketing, then you wouldn’t joke with professional stakeholder research.

Remember! Every category of your target audience of communication is interested ONLY in messaging that speaks the language they’d want to hear. Just like every marketing campaign, you have to think with their caps on.
They are not really interested in whatever you are selling. Oh they already know it’s an “advert.” Therefore, you’d only woo them over if you create storylines that they can take personally. (in the positive use of the expression).

More often, the public relations industry does a terrible job of stakeholder research. In fact, every ‘finding’ is usually based on rule of thumb. We all know effective public relations programmes start and end with research and stakeholder research is a key of the many researches you need to do before putting pen to paper.

Wait a sec! Don’t run away hearing research which means figures and numbers. It’s not a difficult thing to do. You have a great research and analytics firm, called, BrandImpact Consulting. With near-exact science, BrandImpact Consulting is the ally you need through and through your public relations plan to help you with your stakeholder analysis or research.

Within a short notice, the firm can create relevant models, spreadsheets and estimates to give you the full knowledge of WHO you should be talking to. Do you even know that sometimes you would have finished implementation only to discover that the particular campaign actually gifted you a new category of stakeholders you should target in your next campaign? That’s the BrandImpact kind of stakeholder research for you.

In all sincerity, you can’t quantify the value of painting the true picture of your entire target audience. Allow Brand Impact Consulting to do the painting.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-write-your-pr-plan-without-professional-research/