Failing to focus costs communicators and their audiences

This is my second post in a series of documented discoveries and thoughts as I develop my presentation on marketing lessons for PR at the CPRS National Convention in early June.

A PR practitioner has never met someone they didn't want to talk to - other than a reporter.

Kidding aside, I once wrote a communications plan for a stakeholder engagement project that had more than 30 primary audiences. Its an example bordering on ridiculous, but I could have made a case for why every single group (many were specific organizations) needed to be consulted or messaged.

Marketers have a refreshing and dire urge to cut, rather than add audiences to a plan.

Our clients, like PR pros, don't like to turn away anyone. Marketers are duty and contract bound to force clients to pick an ideal customer and focus on selling to them alone. That ideal customer is the one that values our clients' unique value the most. Ideal customers are most likely to buy, at the best price, with the least effort on the sellers' part.

Our clients can and indeed may continue to sell to anyone with cash and a pulse, but putting time and money into convincing non-ideal clients to buy is a waste compared to spending those resources on chasing ideal customers.

The PR angle

Corporate PR lives, in significant part, because it saves money. It's cheaper to earn media than to pay for it. It's cheaper to communicate intentionally and early than abide by the consequences of misunderstandings. The semi-useless comparison of earned column inches to the cost of equivalent ad space underlines this value.

So why do we forget our unique value when we plan to communicate with every possible person who could possibly be interested in what we have to say?

Broadening the audience set casts the PR department into the wicked triangle of project management: you can have it done fast, cheap or well. Pick two. In this case, let's substitute time cost for fast.

I've seen lots of communication plans bathed in new brochures, company-wide emails and mindless press releases, without any single tactic promising to command audience attention. You developed a communications plan that meets time and fiscal limits, but doesn't do an adequate job of communicating with any single audience.

Smart PR pros know that notification is no longer enough. So what is the PR pro to do when called to communicate responsively and meaningfully with the same or fewer dollars and staff?

Focus.

The primary audience bin need not hold every audience you want to hear your message. Ignore convention and select one to three primary audiences that, one, truly need to understand your message and, two, have some things in common. Stage one or a few smart tactics that will grip the whole group. Let those other audiences make do with less so that your key audiences understand and appreciate more.

Marketers' tunnel vision

And for marketers, take the reverse: relax on the ideal client discipline from time to time. A non-profit I'm helping with fundraising and stakeholder relations strategy simply cannot announce the same key value points to each party. Even for-profits could, at times, pick two or three distinct ideal customers who are all equally likely to buy, but perhaps for different reasons. Craft or revise value points for each and diversify that marketing spend.

Some may already be wise to prioritizing audiences and customers, but from what I've seen, it's an art with far too few patrons.