Identifying Key Publics and Characteristics will help a Campaign's Success

The third and last step of formative research is identifying and analyzing the organization's public. This phase is crucial for a campaign's communication strategy to be successful.

Learn more about a successful strategic PR campaign check out this document, here.

Before analyzing the publics, you must identify who the publics is. A public is a group of people who interact and share a common issue or interest with an organization. To be sure not to confuse a public with an organization’s market segment, stakeholder, and audience look for these characteristics amongst groups of people:

• Distinguishable

• Important

• Large Enough

• Homogeneous

• Accessible

A public must be distinguishable, meaning a group of people who can easily be identified and may not be in a specific group together. If a public isn't crucial to the organization's success, it isn't one on which the organization should concentrate its efforts on. A public should be large enough that it can make a noticeable difference and potentially attract media attention. A public typically shares similar interests, traits, and desires and a group with whom an organization communicates and engages with. Someone who is accessible so that additional information about them can be obtained.

Once the characteristics of publics are understood, the next step is to begin identifying and categorizing them into these groups:

• Customers

• Producers

• Enablers

• Limiters

Breaking down the groups above will help obtain more valuable insight into which publics benefit or have the ability to benefit an organization.

As well as which publics have the potential to set them back or have a neutral view on the organization.

Each public category listed above will contain subcategories, also known as linkages, these subcategories are typically more detailed. Let's break it down:

• Customers – a group of individuals who receive/purchase the service or product the organization produces

  • Current customers

  • Formal customers

  • Potential customers

  • Shadow constituencies

• Producers – works directly within the organization

  • Suppliers

  • Financiers

  • Personnel: employees, volunteers and union workers

• Enablers – establishes principles for an organization

  • Media

  • Regulators

  • Community Leaders: Learn more about the influence of these leaders, here.

  • Allies: partners, and collaborators

• Limiters – restricts an organization's ability to communicate its message

  • Competition

  • Opponents

For more details about each of these subcategories check out this article.

It’s vital that an organization breaks down an organization's publics into categories and subcategories before developing a campaign strategy. If an organization skips to identify and evaluate the publics or does so insufficiently, it will fail to understand and learn about the relevant publics. This could result in the campaign's failure.

Don’t forget,

An effective strategic communication strategy will be successful if an organization properly identifies and evaluates the publics!

#Public #Customers #Producers #Enablers #Limiters #FormativeResearch #Linkages

Reference: Smith, R. D. (2020). Strategic Planning for Public Relations (6th Edition). Taylor & Francis. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781000201468