People-Centric PR: Why Understanding Your Audience is Critical

When first entering a partnership with a new client, we often get asked where do we start? Well, for starters, understanding your audience is critical and a crucial factor in crafting messages that will resonate with your external audiences. At Southard Communications and in partnership with Escalate Strategies our vision is to help companies create brands that truly make the world a better place and that starts with talking to and empathizing with people.

Across industries both B2B and B2C, one thing is the same—companies want their product or service to be successful. Yet how they define success and the strategies they use to get there runs the gamut from just tracking outcome numbers like market share to the opposite where success means being perceived as the visionary leader who doesn’t just exceed at selling, but actually has the power to change the cultural narrative. The difference between the two sides is how much they truly understand and embrace the two key elements of success—the importance of brand and the power of people. And those things are deeply connected and rooted strongly in emotion.

The statistics are staggering. Over 80% of people don’t just buy a product or a service, they buy a brand, and not just any brand, but a brand that they feel emotionally connected to, and they are willing to reach deeper in their wallet to do so. It really all boils down to emotion. Yet to really discover what this emotional connection is, we must talk to people, go shopping with them, sit at their dinner table with them. We have to listen in on their discussions and truly hear and empathize with their stories, because they all have a story they are dying to tell, and it is through these stories that a company’s products and services can come to life in a meaningful and emotionally connecting ways.

In a world where media is so fragmented and consumers have shorter and shorter attention spans, we are dealing with potential cases where we have seconds to make a punchy connection to a new product or service, but if we are successful that could be the foundation of a long-term emotional connection upon which strong brands are built and fortified and where mediocrity is separated from greatness.

Yet, we have always been perplexed by companies who are so focused on their products and services that they become blind to the people they hope will become their loyal customers.

While it is great that companies so strongly believe in their product/service that they are willing to forego the cost and time investment of bringing in the voice of the people, it is more often than not to their own detriment, maybe not in the short term, but surely over time. Too many assumptions get made leading to negative consequences such as getting your target audience wrong or creating a product or service that isn’t really reflecting the needs of the consumer, all of which can lead to money lost.

Trying to help companies and their stakeholders see this is one of the most challenging parts of the entire process. And getting stakeholder involvement and buy-in upfront by doing smaller engagements that involve talking to people, gathering their insights, and leveraging them to guide strategy will go a long way. Combining this with the power of education through use of various public case studies of clients that didn’t listen to their consumers at their own expense can start to chip away at the barriers of implementing people-centric strategies. When companies start to see people as more than just dollar signs, but as a ton of living, breathing partners that deserve a seat in that decision-making boardroom driving actionable strategies that then come to life through marketing activation, they will start to experience what it is like to have winning brands.

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