One Step Brands Skip In PR & Marketing Strategy

You can have the greatest branding in the world, but if you’re not showing it the right target market, you wasted your money. Case in point: My PR agency once worked with a CBD company that was targeting retirees for pain relief but the company had poured most of their marketing dollars into Instagram. I had to politely point out that (at the time) retirees were not a demographic that was using this platform so their posts were falling on deaf ears. They needed a better strategy and exposure in publications and websites that retirees actually read.

At our PR company, one of the first questions we ask clients embarking on a wellness PR campaign is, “Who is your target audience?” You’d be surprised how many companies haven’t clearly thought this through. But this is an important step as it informs another step of a PR campaign, your target media list.

What is a target audience?

A target audience is, quite broadly, anyone who might be interested in your product or service. But it goes beyond that. You need to think about the demographics, geographics and psychographics of your target audience. This includes gender, age, where they live, how they think or feel, how they live (ie. interests, hobbies, etc).

Identifying a client’s target audience is truly my starting point for any PR campaign. And I find that many clients need help really drilling down to those audiences. It’s a critical step to really think through who might be interested in your product or service and very clearly and narrowly define those audiences.  Some brands will work with a public relations agency to go through a buyer persona exercise as part of their marketing and branding process to really get inside the psychographics of their target audiences. This can be an immensely beneficial step before embarking on a PR program. 

How to create a target media list

So let’s go back to the CBD pain cream. “Anyone” is too broad of an audience. Who might have pain and how do we best reach them? Let’s look at it demographically. Certainly boomers have pain (I know, because I am one). What does this demographic read and where do they read their news? Then, think about the psychographics of that audience. What are their interests - boomers love to travel, garden, play pickle ball, etc.? So what media are they reading/consuming that might be a good place to reach them? My PR plan for CBD in this case might include pitches to outlets like AARP, regional lifestyle magazines like Southern Living and Sunset, Reader’s Digest The Healthy, Prevention, Pickle Ball Magazine, and more. Boomers also tend to still read daily newspapers so they would certainly be on my list. 

Just to show you a bit more of how this exercise works, let’s look at another potential target audience. Athletes and fitness enthusiasts have pain. So psychographically, what are their interests? Clearly, health is a big focus for this group so we’d want to include Men’s Health, Women’s Health, and other health verticals on our target media list. But we could even get more sport-specific and reach out to publications like Runner’s World, Cycling, Yoga Journal and others. See how it works?

But clearly and narrowly defining your target audience is a critical first step before embarking on a PR campaign. If you’re interested in learning more about how our wellness PR company works with clients to identify target audiences, get in touch and let’s chat.