Data is, Actually, All Around…
Data is, Actually, All Around…
OK, so that’s a play on the famous Wet Wet Wet song, for those of us that are old enough to remember.
But data is, actually, all around.
In PR, we rely on data to ensure we understand the brand, the target consumer, the media they consume, and nowadays, how we measure our campaigns, how we react to a client crisis, and it even allows us to spot a client crisis before it happens.
Types of Data Used in PR
Audience Data
Knowing your audience is a key step in building a successful brand.
Audience data helps us to provide insightful, meaningful take-aways which will guide the rest of the PR process.
By analysing audience data, it provides a better understanding of different types of people; their behaviours, lifestyles and attitudes.
This helps to construct a customer persona - an imagined version of the target customer - which enables a marketer to tailor their campaign directly to their wants, needs, desires and pain points.
Audience Data Gone Wrong
An example of a marketing campaign that failed due to audience data not being used in the proper way, was a well-intentioned campaign by Levi’s.
An American campaign called ‘Hotness Comes in All Shapes and Sizes’, the purpose was to show that Levi’s was a denim brand for the ‘average, American woman’ and that Levi’s were the perfect fit, no matter your size.
Sounds great, right? So, why did they fail? They used only images of super-slim models across their ad campaigns, which didn’t represent the ‘average, American woman’, and actually excluded their target market which left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
Intelligence Data
Intelligence data allows an agency, or in-house team, to measure success. The foundation for any marketing campaign, intelligence data will include a range of measurables including:
Current web traffic
Current subscriber count/app downloads
Current sales stats
From there, KPIs and goals are created to ensure we know what success will look like:
Coverage attained (and on what date)
New leads generated
Target sales stats
Target traffic to site
Target subscribers or app downloads
Intelligence data also works to create realistic goals and objectives.
Whilst it may be a brand’s dream to get into the Wall Street Journal, an assessment of their current stats may prove that, actually, regional and trade coverage would be more impactful in gaining awareness and increasing sales or sign-ups.
Campaign Data
Campaign data can be used to qualify where your campaign ends up but it can also be used to guide your campaign narrative and ensure it’s credible and authoritative.
Media targets and distribution channels create a way to measure the campaign’s success, but data within the campaign itself helps to create a hook and to connect to the readers…(more on this, later).
Questions to ask when evaluating campaign data are:
What are the key media targets?
And why?
How will the campaign be disseminated?
What format will the campaign take?
What data will the campaign rely on? Facts? Figures? Or research?
What is the key message for the campaign and is it clear?
Campaign Data Gone Wrong
As the cost-of-living crisis hit the UK, a few of the big energy firms certainly managed to put their ‘foot’ in it.
Energy firm E.On sent 30,000 customers pairs of socks that featured advice on how to keep warm.
Meanwhile, SSE had earlier sent communications to its customers with a range of staying warm tips including ‘cuddling the cat’ and ‘doing star jumps’.
Needless to say, this didn’t go down well with customers who found it incredibly patronising and tone-deaf in light of the seriousness of people struggling to afford bills.
The companies both later apologised for the mishaps, and though seemingly well-intentioned, the messaging just didn’t hit the mark at a time where people were choosing to ‘heat or eat’.
Sentiment Data
The E.On example above was uncovered due to customers’ Tweeting pictures of the socks, which were then reshared hundreds of times and eventually picked up by media outlets.
On the face of it, and in a report, it may have otherwise seemed like a fantastic result gaining hundreds of shares, comments and likes, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
At DATS, we track all PR coverage as well as sentiment analysis which allows us to see if the coverage, and resulting conversations, are positive, negative or neutral.