Chapter 2: Setting Strategy: Finding the “Why”

Identify Audiences

With so many ways to share messages – from the language used to the channel where it appears – knowing the intended audience and what these people want, need and care about is an important area for discovery. Audiences can be external or internal, positive or negative, consumers or influencers or media with the ability to sway consumers. The discovery process identifies past, current and potential audiences. It then digs deeper into those audiences identified as a target for the organization or specific initiative.

Really Know Target Audiences
Public relations focuses on building relationships between organizations and different groups of people, and it’s difficult to forge or grow a relationship without investing the time to get to know those people. This may include exploring information from basic demographics to lifestyles and a deeper understanding of a target audience’s wants, interests and needs. With a firm understanding of both your brand and your target audiences, you can seek out points of overlap or ways your organization can integrate into an audience’s lifestyle or appeal to specific wants/interests/need. As the discovery process moves into the planning process, this information will support development of messaging, visuals and platforms tailored to the specific audience.

License

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Write Like a PR Pro by Mary Sterenberg is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.