7 Ways To Target PR Psychographics With 1 Tool

For public relations (PR) professionals, services like Cision — formerly known as Vocus — are an essential part of doing business. PR pros log in almost every day to update media lists or find new contacts to build relationships with on behalf of clients. It’s incredibly valuable for getting the results clients expect. It’s also […]

For public relations (PR) professionals, services like Cision — formerly known as Vocus — are an essential part of doing business. PR pros log in almost every day to update media lists or find new contacts to build relationships with on behalf of clients. It’s incredibly valuable for getting the results clients expect.

It’s also a valuable resource for psychographic targeting and reaching traditional and online media influencers. In this week’s edition of the Psychographic Targeting Hot House, Kevin Watterson, one of aimClear’s Account Mangers with a hefty PR background, demonstrates how to build and improve precise social psychographic targeting using the wealth of information PR tools like Cision put at your fingertips.

Take Advantage Of What You Already Collect

Let’s say you have a client who wants to promote its new line of insulated and waterproof work boots in the Northeast before winter hits. You have a creative pitch tailored especially to morning TV, so you do the obvious searches and gather information like this:

Throw their email address and phone number into your media list, but don’t gloss over their job titles. You can slide those into your list of targeting options in Facebook and, of course, use them as stems to reach other job titles:

Bonus PR Tip: Because you’re dealing with winter boots that stand up to the toughest winter weather, try adding the morning meteorologists to your outreach list. Of course, you’ll want to research their names and the show first to see if the segment you’re pitching would be a good fit for their show.

Double Bonus Marketing Tip: What do meteorologists and reporters do in the winter? Live shots outside in the cold. Why not include these job titles in your targeting lists for potential customers, with custom creative relevant to their experience? Now back to your Cision results…

Zoom Out To Employers

Zooming out from the individual contact level, you’ll also get the broad list of morning shows from which you pull the contacts.

What are WFVX, WLBZ, WPXT, WCSH and WABI? Well, they’re TV stations. But they’re also… employers. And you can certainly target those:

Replicate this as you move through your media list — including newspapers, magazines and so on — and your targeting audiences will be off to a solid start.

Put Those Emails To Work. Real Work.

So you’ve used Cision to build out a great media list full of contacts and emails. Instead of blasting every name on the list with the same generic pitch (you’re a better PR pro than that!), export the list to a spreadsheet and upload it as a Facebook Custom Audience. You could just target that group, but unless you’re at a high level with a huge media list, that won’t be very effective. If that’s the case, create a Lookalike Audience based on your Custom Audience. Facebook will put its brains to work to give you a new targeting audience made up of people who look like your original Custom Audience of media contacts.

If you’re looking to promote in Twitter, you can use the Create new list feature within the Audience Manager to upload the same list of contacts.

Use Influencer Search

Suppose you’re trying to reach influencers in a specific vertical. You can go right to your home section within Cision and search directly for influential media members. (If you don’t see influencer search, you may have to add it.)  Cast a big net here with your first search. It’ll give you up to 1,000 results, which you can then filter if your list is too broad. The system will help you by showing which filtering will have the biggest effect on the size of your list.

Influencer search results will turn up contacts at traditional media outlets, but it hits online influencers, as well. You’ll get email addresses to add to your media list and to use for potential custom and lookalike audiences. The real benefit here is that Cision will also give you the influencers’ Twitter handles, which you can take straight into Ads to target users similar to their followers or upload to a new list audience.

Mine Pre-built Media Outlet Lists

If you want to target the fans and followers of the most influential media outlets within your vertical, or within a geographic area, Cision makes it easy by providing pre-built lists. If you’re building an influencer list, dig deeper into the contacts for each of the top outlets to get more job titles you can add to your Facebook targeting. If you click all the way through to individual contact pages, you’ll get Twitter handles you can use for your list audiences or follower targeting.

Reaching influencers through social psychographic targeting is an effective way to generate the type of coverage and buzz that good PR thrives on. With a wealth of information like that provided by media database tools, you can reach people with the authority your audience will trust.