For your PR campaigns to achieve their objectives you need to really understand your audiences. For those of you that know the marketeer Seth Goodwin, he’s a big fan of this and I agree. Insight is everything.
Many of you will have already identified your audiences, but do you know their other likes and what matters to them and more importantly what problems you are solving for them?
It is likely there are a number of audiences you need to consider when thinking about your PR strategies. For example:
Investors
Customers and clients
Influencers
Your peers and industry
Each audience will need to hear a story that is relevant to them. And to reach each specific audience you will need insight
Note - If your audiences is ‘anyone’ or ‘everyone’ then something has gone wrong
1. Reaching the investment community
There are a host of news sites aimed at the investor and start-up community including Fintech futures, Fintech Finance, Fintech global, Finextra, TechRound, FintechTimes, TechCrunch and Sifted.
Each news site will have a different focus so worth doing your homework to see which one is right for you.
They will be interested in stories that focus on your funding and future growth plans.
2. Reaching customers
How does your customer make decisions. Often humans make decisions intuitively and then rationalise with logic. Your communications needs to address the ‘think, feel and do’ elements of how people make a decision.
A good way to start is think, what problems does your company or service solve?
Where you can have a conversation
The key is to work out where you can have the conversations and this can be as much about barriers that may be stopping them making a purchase and helping them overcome them.
3. Becoming part of the Fintech and financial services community
The fintech world is very collaborative and it is worth considering how you want to engage with your peers. It can be informal networking to becoming a member of one of the larger fintech communities such as Innovate Finance Innovate Finance – The Voice of Global FinTech or the FinTech Alliance FinTech Alliance - The vibrant community for all of UK FinTech (fintech-alliance.com)
You can start by looking at groups on LinkedIn to join and join in (and eventually lead) the interesting conversations.
4. Key messages should be same across all sections
So you now know your story, your audience and what matters to them. The final piece of the PR puzzle is where they go for information.
I’m sure there was a time when one of your customers would read a glowing article or get a recommendation from a professional and make a decision to buy your product or use your service there and then. However today this is just a start of a conversation. The well-known ‘marketing’ funnel is not so much a funnel as a flywheel where momentum needs to build when it comes to awareness and consideration. Your clients need to see the same messages across all channels before making a purchase decision.
It is then important to ensure if your audience like what they see at one touch point, then once they start searching for more information on your brand, they see the same messages on your website, on social media and on web searches. The advantage is that the customers who then come to buy your products or services have already started a dialogue with your company and it’s one they want to continue.
The Finance Talks can offer further help
We understand that writing good content does not come naturally to some people. Others are too busy to spend time creating editorial for their business.
Whatever the reason, don’t let it stand in the way of getting your stories published.
Get in touch with The Finance Talks today and we can help if you have further communication needs.
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