Communicating to your customers, clients and prospects is a vital ingredient when building and scaling your business.
But with so many platforms and channels available to you, it can be hard to choose which ones are right for your business. Everywhere you turn, a guru will be telling you how important (insert chosen channel) is.
It’s easy to get caught up in the hype without giving your comms strategy a second thought.
To show my age, when I first started working in the PR industry, social media didn’t exist. 😱 Companies relied on PR and Marketing to communicate with their audience. It was often a one-sided conversation, yet it proved to be efficient and effective.
ENDLESS ONLINE OPPORTUNITIES
The advent of social media opened up the communication channels between brands and their customers. For the first time ever, brands could include their customers in their comms tactics.
They could have actual conversations and bring their customers into their business;
✅ Giving them behind the scenes access
✅ Involving them in product development
✅ Asking them questions to gain insights into what they like and dislike and what impacts their buying decisions.
This information was (and still is) gold dust. Before social media, obtaining this level of insight would have cost thousands in polls and research that was usually outsourced to specialist data agencies.
Social Media certainly disrupted the comms landscape. Now, 18 years on, you could argue that it dominates how customers interact and engage with brands, and the role it plays in influencing buying behaviour.
BUT, It’s important to remember that social media isn’t the only tool available in the comms toolbox. It’s also important to remember that not all of your customers are using social media.
The most important word in the sentence above?
Customers.
CUSTOMER-CENTRIC STRATEGIES
When mapping out your Comms strategy, it’s important to ask yourself the following questions:
1. Who is your target customer?
2. What type of content are they consuming?
3. Which platforms are they using to consume this content?
Once you know the answers to these three key questions, you can build your comms strategy and tactics and bring in the right support to connect you to your customers in a way that works for them.
Social media certainly makes you more accessible to the masses than PR and Advertising, but it can also be incredibly overwhelming, especially if you tune in to the conflicting advice that ‘gurus ‘share.
It’s easy to get caught up in the noise of how one platform is performing compared to all the others and lose sight of what matters to your business and your customers.
If those platforms aren’t being used by your key customers then you’re simply setting yourself up to fail (and will be spending money unnecessarily in the process)
Not only will you waste time and energy, but money and resources too.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL
Research and data aren’t sexy subjects, but I love rolling up my sleeves and diving into data as it gives you all the information you need to make better decisions and avoid being pulled in a direction that doesn’t support the growth of your business.
So, if you are averse to deep diving into the data, I’ve got some topline figures to share with you, to give you extra insight into some of the tactics that you may be using to acquire new customers and engage with your audience.
It may even help you decide which tactics to ditch completely!
According to an article from Smart Insights:
👉 62.6% (5.07 billion people) in the world now use social media, spending an average of 2hrs and 20mins on social media sites daily.
👉 93.3% of internet users are currently using social media.
👉 The top four social media platforms are:
1. Facebook
2. YouTube
3. Instagram
4. What’s App
I wouldn’t personally class YouTube or What’s App as social media platforms. What’s App is a communications channel and YouTube is an edutainment platform (education + entertainment = edutainment), so I’m taking this particular piece of data with a pinch of salt!
Statistics from Sprout Social show us the engagement rates of social media, which may (or may not) shock you:
➡️ TikTok came out on top with engagement rates at 2.65%
➡️ Instagram was next in line, with engagement rates of 0.70%
➡️ Facebook’s engagement rates are 0.15%
➡️ Twitter’s engagement rates are even lower at 0.05%
If you’re a brand with millions of followers, then these engagement rates will still look quite healthy (2.65% of 1 million is 26,500)
But if you have 100,000 followers then the number of people engaging in your TikTok content is only 2,650 😱
I can see why so many brands feel that they need to be on TikTok as it’s a platform that’s continuing to grow year on year. However, before you get caught up in the frenzy of its popularity, it’s worth looking at the demographic of TikTok users.
According to Exploding Topics, 1 in 4 TikTok users are under 20 years old. There are more Gen Z users on TikTok than on Instagram. The majority of creators on the platform are aged 18-24 and 57% of their users are female.
If we look at a breakdown of age groups using TikTok:
👉 25% are aged 10-19
👉 22.4% are aged 20-29
👉 21.7% are aged 30-39
👉 20.3% are aged 40-49
👉 11% are aged 50+
If we look at a breakdown of the demographic of Instagram users (According to Sprout Social):
➡️ 51.8% are male and 48.2% are female
➡️ 30.8% are aged 18-24
➡️ 30.3% are aged 25-34
➡️ 15.7% are aged 35-44
➡️ 8.4% are aged 45-54
➡️ 6.9% are aged 55+
If we look at a breakdown of the demographic of Facebook users (According to Social Pilot)
👉 56.8% are male and 43.2% are female
👉 21.5% are aged 18-24
👉 29.9% are aged 25-34
👉 19.4% are aged 35-44
👉 11.6% are aged 45-54
👉 12.9% are aged 55+
If we look at a breakdown of the demographic of LinkedIn users (According to Napoleon Cat):
➡️ 43.6% are female and 56.4% are male
➡️ 20.7% of users are aged 18-24
➡️ 47.5% are aged 25-34
➡️ 26% are aged 35-54
➡️ 5.7% are aged 55+
BE VISIBLE WHERE YOUR CLIENTS ACTUALLY ARE
The data above gives you an overview of the platforms you need to focus on to reach your core market, based on their age.
If your core customers are under 35 years of age then social media is a fantastic tool to use to raise your profile, build credibility, trust, improve your reputation and ultimately, turn strangers into customers.
But what if they’re not?
What if you specifically target the over 40s?
As the stats above show, this age group is using social media, just not as many as the younger generations. So where are they consuming their content?
It may be that this age group is spending more time consuming specific content on YouTube, listening to podcasts, or reading content from online media outlets (or, shock horror, actually buying a physical copy of a magazine or daily newspaper!! 😱😱)
Your job is to understand where your core customers are consuming content. Then you need to show up in those places in a way that gets them to take some sort of positive action with regards to your brand.
As the social media figures above show, engagement rates on social media are low. If you’re investing in ads on social media, it’s worth bearing in mind that standard conversion rates are 1-2%, which is why it’s so important to nail your organic social media content before feeding the ads machine.
MONEY IS HIDING IN EMAIL MARKETING
There’s no denying that your email list is one of your biggest assets when it comes to audience engagement, building trust and making sales.
You own the data on your email list. With social media platforms you’re simply renting your audience (and also fighting an algorithm that has been trained to never let you win.)
The ultimate goal is to get as many of your social media followers onto your email list, which is often easier said than done! Yet, once you increase your email list subscribers you can start to dig deeper into the buying psychology of your audience and start to map out trends that will help in future email marketing campaigns.
According to Smart Insights, the average email open rate is 36.5% and the average click-through rate is 1.4%. To an outsider looking in, the drop-off rate between opening and email and clicking a link is high, but this is where the long game comes into play….
….with email marketing, you get to see which individuals are opening your emails on a regular basis (if you have the time and resources to delve deeper into that data).
WORTH THE WAIT?
It may be that a particular individual opens 10 of your emails before clicking a link to purchase from you.
It may be that another individual reads all of your emails, but never buys. This is where you get to set up automation sequences within your CRM system to email them a specific campaign to ask them questions that will help you understand why they haven’t purchased, or to find out what else they need from you to go ahead and purchase.
Software systems are so strealined these days that once you’ve set up the automation in the backend, you can sit back and watch the feedback roll in. Again, this will help you when you’re planning your next email marketing campaign as you’ve been able to tweak and improve, based on the data and feedback.
Hitting the sweet spot with email marketing can take months of tweaking and testing. A/B testing can be a really powerful tool that will help you make informed decisions in the future.
HITTING THE HEADLINES!
The headline that you use will determine whether or not your email campaigns are opened in the first place. According to Smart Insights, the sweet spot for your headline is between 20-60 characters, based on open rates and click-through rates.
When it comes to headlines, the data above echoes what Bianca Barratt, Senior Contributor at Forbes shared during an exclusive masterclass with a handful of my clients. When emailing journalists, she said: “The headline needs to be five words or less as additional words won’t show up if I’m reading emails on my phone.”
MEASURING BRAND EXPOSURE AND EXPERT STATUS?
When it comes to PR, it’s no secret that measuring results and ROI is tricky. It’s the biggest reason why brands don’t adopt it as a communications tool, even though it’s one of the most powerful and effective tools available to you.
Think about it: You could be featured in Psychologies in August. An ideal client reads your article, visits your website and subscribes to your newsletter. You email them once or twice a week for 12 months. At this point they decide to book a consultation call and choose to work with you. Do you attribute this to email marketing, or PR? It should be the latter, but because it’s taken 12 months of nurturing, you’ve forgotten that they entered your sales funnel via PR.
Unless you’re specifically tracking the orginial source of all of your leads, you’ll easily forget the impact that PR has on driving traffic into your funnel.
REMEMBER THE ROLE OF PR
The #1 role of PR is to raise your profile and increase brand awareness.
Unless someone takes action from hearing you on a podcast, seeing you on TV, or reading an article that features your expertise or your products, there’s no way of measuring how many people actually listened to you, watched you, or read about you.
If they do take action it can be anything from visiting your website, signing up to your newsletter or following you on social media.
If they visit your website then this data is captured by Google Analytics, which shows you which pages people are viewing and how long they’re staying on your site. However, unless they sign up for something and share their data with you, there’s no way of knowing if they’ll return (this is where Meta ads come into their own as you can target warm website traffic)
If they choose to follow you on social media then it’s important to track whether or not an increase in followers happened within 72 hours of a piece of media coverage being published or broadcast. If so, you can attribute that new follower to PR, giving further insight into the types of media coverage that drive traffic to your business.
When it comes to measuring the effects of PR, Agencies will often focus on reach as it’s often the most tangible statistic to measure, as data shows us how many readers, listeners or viewers a media outlet has.
However, as measurement is key to analysing the success of any comms tactic, it’s down to PRs and their clients to decide what will be measured. Is it reach? Is it how many people commented or engaged with an article, is it how many people took action after consuming published content?
KEEP IT SIMPLE, SWEETHEART
For me, the simplest thing to measure is input vs outcomes.
Focussing on reach alone isn’t enough. You need to drill down into what the consequence of the reach was:
❓ Did it drive new visitors to your website?
❓ Did you experience an influx of new people following you on social media?
❓ Did you make more sales in the first 48-72 hours after the interview / article was published?
I often joke that PR is like a spider building a web. It’s intricate and delicate with all the pieces being woven together to create a beautiful masterpiece.
Which is exactly what your comms tactics should be doing. PR, Marketing and Social Media should be working together to create a beautiful masterpiece that drives the brand and the business forward.
DATA DRIVEN DECISIONS
Now that I’ve thrown all that data at you, you can see how important the data is when it comes to choosing how much time, energy, resources and revenue are invested into each individual tactic used in your comms strategy.
As a business owner, when you’re working with internal and external teams to create and implement your comms strategy, it’s important to make sure that everyone is on the same page and even more important to regularly audit the data provided by each tactic.
My general rule of thumb is to analyse your data every six months.
Auditing data isn’t sexy – I get it! But, it’s fundamental if you want to avoid investing money in pointless tactics that aren’t working and are costing you money, as opposed to bringing more in.
You also may not have the resources available to you in-house to analyse all the data you have access to. Historically, those who work in Comms are incredibly creative, so data may not float their boat. Equally, it’s often better for team morale to bring an external consultant into the business as they’re bringing a fresh perspective and aren’t emotionally attached to the input, output or outcomes of your Comms strategy.
STREAMLINE FOR SUCCESS
If you haven’t audited your Comms tactics in the past six months (or ever), then this is the sign to do something about it!
Thankfully, I’ve started offering a Comms Audit as too many brands are spending time and money on tactics that aren’t delivering an ROI and aren’t in alignment with the growth goals of the business.
As part of the Comms Audit I will:
✅ Spend the day with you and the team on-site, to understand more about the business; your vision, your mission, your ethos and your key target audience.
✅ I’ll then analyse what comms tactics you’re currently using, based on the past six months of data, and assess how effective it is at driving you towards your growth goals.
✅ I’ll then present my findings to you via a Zoom call and make recommendations on how to improvement performance and results.
✅ If necessary, I can then work with your team to bring those recommendations to life, or my team can implement it on your behalf.
To discuss your needs in more detail, either email me on laura@prwithperkes.com, or schedule a consultation call with me. You can access my online diary here.
For info, the investment for a Comms Audit starts from £3,000 + VAT
