PR Research Increases Relevancy and Relatability

Understanding the type of people our work serves, what those individuals value, and how they communicate should be a three-pronged strategy of most communication endeavors. Relating to people to build long-term relationships takes intention and effort.

Conducting research is the key to unlocking the who, what and how strategies. Research is the first step in the four-step PR planning process PRSA recommends. But what research do we need to use in which circumstances? 

Budgeting funds (and time) to research our publics may seem nonessential for established organizations that think they know their stakeholders. People change, so smart pros know it’s important to conduct qualitative or quantitative research to make data-inspired decisions that address our target stakeholders’ evolving wants and needs. 

I met Mike Johnson, managing principal of PersonaTel, at the 2024 PRSA Counselor’s Academy Conference. He has 20 years of experience using research and analysis to help organizations improve how they market, communicate and innovate for their stakeholders. 

How can research help organizations understand the views and opinions of their stakeholders?

PersonaTel utilizes short and in-depth online and telephone surveys/interviews to help organizations gain a deeper understanding of the stakeholders that matter most to their organization’s reputation, community engagement, communications and marketing efforts. Some of the most common stakeholders we research are local community members, employees, customers and even suppliers.

How can PR professionals use stakeholder research to inform our work?

Every PR campaign message, communication or crisis response has at least one, usually multiple audiences that will receive and interpret that message. The better that PR practitioner or team understands those audiences, the more likely they are to craft a campaign or message that actually resonates with them.

Just like marketers and product innovators invest in a deep understanding of their customers before launching, PR practitioners should view their communications and outreach efforts the same.

Why are personas helpful for understanding target audiences and stakeholders?

The primary goal of personas is to force empathy into a campaign’s message and delivery. When done well, personas accomplish this by going beyond describing a target audience’s demographics. 

Personas can get to the heart of what the audience values, what motivates them, and how they make decisions or form opinions. This perspective enables PR and communications practitioners to include “nuggets” or gems in their campaigns/communications that will help them be viewed as credible, authentic and well-received by those audiences.

Measuring local community sentiment is often forgotten for many organizations. When is it important for organizations to gain a deeper understanding of community sentiment?

Typically, organizations that rely heavily upon their local community for recruitment, support for construction or expansion projects, or regulatory compliance should conduct community research and polling regularly. This includes a wide variety of organizations from large manufacturing sites, local governments, real estate developers, or even large warehouse facilities. 

These organizations can have environmental, policy, economic and quality-of-life impacts on their local community. Yet these organizations’ operations rely upon their local community’s support. This makes it important to manage their reputation and standing with those communities.

What are some best practices for stakeholder research aimed to inform an organization's reputation or local community sentiment?

Sampling is probably the most important factor. Since this type of research is typically aimed to gauge sentiment of a broader audience, it's important to talk to enough people to get to a decent level of statistical significance to make inferences about that larger audience.

 You also need to talk to a mix of people who are as close to representing your overall stakeholder group as possible. This can be difficult for many organizations as it usually requires a willingness to proactively reach out to, and recruit respondents from harder-to-access groups (i.e., people not active online/social media and minority communities).

However, excluding harder-to-reach segments of your stakeholder group can lead to dramatically biased results, conclusions, and actions.