What Does it Take to Incorporate Audience-Based Objectives Into Your Strategic PR Plans?

Are you ready to take the first step in feeling like you can confidently point to an answer to the question of: did you reach the right audience at the right place at the right time?

If you work in sports, you may have a pretty good sense of all of the different stakeholders your communications efforts touch and many times your PR efforts may be ultimately seen as helping to drive fanbase interest/engagement/retention.

So why does it seem so challenging for sports PR pros to incorporate audience-based objectives into their planning?

You may have already read plenty of articles, viewed a free webinar or had someone on your team as the “data person” to think about your communications efforts, but I hope to be able to add my perspectives on what it takes to start, today, with audience-based objectives FIRST and then figure out measurement SECOND.

Many people believe that there isn’t a great way to measure public relations efforts - or that it is incredibly expensive or there are just too many “flavor of the week” type data points out there, all of which you find yourself thinking (post-campaign): “should we track that”, but that may be holding you back. 

If you're struggling with your communications planning and want to start simple and build from there when it comes to having a clear purpose of what you’re setting out to do, this is the place for you.

Ready to dive into a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into audience-based objectives?

Always Remember to start with your audiences, plural

If you've been finding yourself looking at a set of business objectives you’re trying to accomplish, you might immediately pick up your bag of tricks and think about what tried and true methods have worked in the past when you’ve tried to support the efforts on the comms side.

Or, you aren’t totally sure of what the true business objectives are, and you’ve been handed a “we need to get a press release out on this new ticket promotional calendar - and we need it yesterday.”

If either of those situations are ones that feel familiar, you aren’t alone and there is a way to take a first step out of that.

In the first scenario, you knowing the business objectives overall for the year/quarter/month and how this campaign ladders up to that is great. Now we have a sense of what the business success is looking like. Comms can help with that!

In the second scenario, you being asked to write a press release (a tactic) that ladders up to a strategy (distribute news through media relations), you’re likely missing a few puzzle pieces: chiefly, how does what the heck I’m doing ladder up to the company’s objectives and how is this going to help? Or am I simply crafting this because someone says so or we’ve always done a release each fall for the ticketing team. 

Ask yourself, who (plural) do I think I am trying to reach and who benefits (internally and externally) from us first identifying these audiences?

Hint: Everyone benefits from this internally and externally, your objectives path becomes a heck of a lot clearer.

Are we trying to reach season ticket holders? Casual sports fans? Single-match buyers? The corporate community? Start with your list of stakeholders

Second Hint: If you and your team don’t have a list handy of your internal and external stakeholders listed out for you to review before sitting down to gameplan, I run a workshop on stakeholder mapping and engagement. Let’s talk.

When we have our target audiences externally that we’re trying to reach we are able to prioritize that list - perhaps your top 3, or 5 - I would not go more than that – and make sure we understand why these stakeholders.

Third (longer) hint: If your first list of stakeholders here has “the general public,” - you’re too general and not specific enough. If your first list has on here “the media,” - I would challenge you to take a step back. Here’s why: if you’re seeking to improve your overall media relations and believe you may have a media relations challenge on your hand, then you might be sitting there believing that a set group of media either is unaware of what your organization does, has a specific (non neutral) opinion or attitude about your org or you simply are looking for more action from them (more coverage in general, more thought leadership, more collaboration, whatever), then press pause on this and revisit a media relations strategy more comprehensively. In most cases, like the campaign we’re talking about launching a ticketing promotion, we’re talking about reaching specific audiences and viewing media as a conduit/channel to reach said audiences. This doesn’t mean you aren’t going to have media relations as part of your efforts, but I’ll explain more below about why IDing your target stakeholders allows you to set more specific objectives.

My Routine for setting audience-based objectives

I am happy to say that once I looked at my list of target stakeholders, I was able to begin asking myself this next question that you should be using today.

That question starts to look like the below. What do I want each target audience to:

• Think: [e.g., “oh, nice, they have a promotional night - I wonder if the game I’m thinking of has a giveaway]

• Feel: [e.g., “oh, that’s actually a nice bobble head - I want to get one.”]

• Say: [e.g., “we have to get there early if we’re going to get one”]

• Do: [e.g., “I’ve got my tickets transferred to my buddy to join me and I’m showing up when gates open two hours prior to the game to get mine”]

How are those questions “think-feel-say-do” helping your audiences? Well it’s pretty unlikely that a season ticket holder who comes to your games regularly is going to have the same potential thoughts, feelings, quotes or actions surrounding whatever it is you’re setting out to do. So it’s natural to begin to ideate potential think-feel-say-do to secure alignment.

Don’t make assumptions on think-feel-do-either. This is where data comes into play and is a topic for a deeper conversation about specific (SMART) objectives within your audiences. For now, let’s keep it simple and start with think-feel-say-so for audience-specific objectives.

Don't be afraid to start to think about the customer journey our friends in marketing are regularly talking about? If journeys are different, than the larger or smaller actions will be different across audiences. Sometimes the “action” is easiest to start with and work your way backwards…i.e. If i know what i want them to do, what are they likely needing to say or feel [or be aware of (think)] to start.

Here’s why this shouldn’t scare you:

1) getting more specific allows you to come up with clearer actions (and non actions)

2) think-feel-say-do are all different specific outcomes you’re searching for but are specific, tangible things you can measure against

3) the “do” part can be challenging for comms pros to have traditional attribution for, but seeking out as a group to say you are creating plans that drive customers through the journey is more understandable when looking at success your work had overall as an org than output objectives like “number of placements secured,” (way more on that another time).

You don’t need to have a robust think-feel-say-do list when you’re starting out but getting your group (inter department and intra department) aligned on these generally BEFORE you start mapping out your comms plans are going to save you time, money, headaches, and meaningless noise being sent to people that aren’t necessarily the direct movers and shakers you’re trying to connect with for this particular item. 

Some Advice from the Measurement Queen herself, Katie Paine

I first became interested in audience based objectives when digging into readings by Katie Paine. They say never meet your heroes and goodness what a garbage phrase. Katie is the best and has been at the forefront of PR measurement for years and after nearly a decade of digging into measurement and following her work from afar, attending her courses (multiple times), I have been able to connect with her to learn from her and talk about my world (sports) and one of my passions (strategic plans + measurement). She’s an incredible resource.

If you’re understanding what you’re trying to do as a business, and who you’re trying to reach, you’re nearly a third of the way through setting yourself up for success in standards-compliant measurement and 100 pct there in being able to think about whether what you’re setting out to do falls in an awareness objective (think), an attitude objective (feel) or action objective (say, do).