How do you reach 60 million people with a PR campaign about hearing health?
How do you reach 60 million people with a PR campaign about hearing health?
By focusing on what impact your story needs to make before you start building your campaign. Let us explain more...
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Every business will have a different strapline that succinctly explains what they do. We’re no different at Viva, but what do we mean by Storytelling with Impact ?
We live in an age of accountability, and this means all parts of a business need to generate and showcase value. We’re also on the verge on an inevitable recession, and the first thing businesses usually do in a period of uncertainty is look for ways to save money.?
This means every activity in public relations has to offer value – what we define as impact – and every pound spent has to work harder to deliver it.
We’d argue public relations began as a media content analysis tool – ie can you get our spokesperson in the news and how much coverage can you achieve? But that’s only part of the story.?
The biggest mistake PR and comms specialists can make today is defaulting to the measurements of old, instead of looking at the?impact?made by PR.?
Let’s take a look at how impact plays a part in PR – and which measurements you need to focus on in order to uncover that impact.
1. Vanity metrics
These are activity-driven metrics – how many likes, shares, retweets did your content get? How much volume have you created? How many pieces of coverage did you collect??
These are what we call vanity metrics, and all they serve to do is show you’ve been busy ‘doing stuff’.?
There’s an obvious need to blend:
Basically, stop counting the things that are easy to count. Instead, focus on counting and measuring the things that matter – the qualitative elements – to report back to your client.
2. What’s the plan?
You wouldn’t set off on a journey without planning your route, would you? How are you going to get there?
In order for Viva to deliver Storytelling with Impact through PR activity, there has to be a measurable objective at the beginning that we can work from.?
If you don’t fully understand the objectives, you won’t form a credible plan. And if you don’t have that, then you won’t have credible measurements to analyse and share at the end. That means no impact, just numbers.
Sounds simple, right??
PR Planning is critical and that’s why we offer it as a service.?
This means we often ask difficult questions at the very beginning, so we can understand what impact our clients want to make (even if they don’t know themselves yet).?
This means we can pin down exactly what the client’s objective is, because without it, we can’t deliver impact.?
3. Don’t be afraid to ask why
Employing someone to deliver PR – whether it’s an agency or an internal team – is an investment for your client. But don’t be afraid to ask why they want someone to handle their PR.
Just ticking a box is not good enough, and this especially won’t wash with the decision makers at the top.
Why are we doing this?
What is the outcome for the business that shows success?
What does good look like?
For example, ‘generating awareness’ means nothing if there’s no starting point and objective to aim for.?
Ultimately in PR, we’re trying to get a message to the right people, in the right place, at the right time, and we want them to do something with that message.?
If that message doesn’t pass the ‘why would the audience care?’ test, then it’s back to the drawing board.?
4. Quality is better than quantity
Much like the vanity metrics of old, having a vast library of coverage doesn’t tell the client anything apart from you’ve been busy.?
At Viva, we look at vanity metrics and think: ‘so what?’???
Quality coverage is ultimately better than quantity – establish the titles your client wants to be seen in and really focus on those instead of a blanket approach.?
Take our client Amplifon for example.
We devised the Amplifon Awards for Brave Britons in 2016 and for the past three years, we’ve had a solid working partnership with the Daily Express.?
This came from homing in on exactly where our client wanted to be, and ultimately meant the Express had its own dedicated category for its readers to vote for in 2022.?
We reached 60 million people with this campaign , thanks to establishing the impact our client wanted to make (ie the titles it wanted to collaborate with).
If there’s unrealistic and untargeted expectations from the client and their stakeholders – such as ‘get us loads of coverage’ – you need to have these conversations before you do the work.?
There’s a lot to be said for educating the client on what impact looks in 2023, plus there’s nothing worse than overpromising and underdelivering.
5. Delivering impact takes time
As much as we’d love for every PR activity to be an overnight success, good comms can take time to happen and for impact to appear, but if you’ve done it right and planned properly from the start, it’ll be worth the wait.
The same goes for pulling together the evidence of measurable impact to show your client.?
These are harder elements to measure than vanity metrics, but PR agencies that fail to embrace this are running the risk of being seen as an expensive way of showing ‘busyness’ and not delivering impact or adding value.?
6. Audit your PR for FREE
One way of delving into our world of PR – and without it costing you a penny – is to take advantage of our free PR Audit . It takes a matter of minutes and could be the difference between whether your PR makes the impact you want and need it to in 2023 or not.
You’ll get the results from our experts, with no obligation, within two working days. We’ll share with you what’s working for you and what isn't, plus how we can deliver storytelling with impact for you.?