Creating Research for PR — Speak to Your Audience

Steven Silvers writes an interesting point about making sure that if you are using research to generate PR buzz, you use it wisely.  He points out ”the good, the bad and the ugly” of research, noting that one bad piece of self-serving research can come back to bite you.

I would add the following point:  make sure your research actually “speaks to” the audience you are trying to create buzz with. 

A lot of small business research is sent to me, and I admit, I love to read it. 

However, the biggest mistake I see is that instead of research on topics that would help small businesses, companies perform research about small businesses. 

Now maybe that research about small businesses is helpful to you internally in developing new products, marcomm messaging — whatever.  If your primary purpose is internal, excellent. 

But if you expect research to create PR buzz for you with small businesses, most of it won’t.  It just doesn’t speak to the business owner on anything he or she needs for running a business.

One of the most promising uses of research as a PR approach to reach small businesses, is what UPS did.  UPS conducted research on a subject that is confusing, baffling or downright scary to most small and medium business exporters:  selling in China.  They accumulated outside statistics and resources, and then put them together into a dedicated website for that purpose. 

I even wrote about UPS’s survey site last year, when I first learned about it, because I was so struck by it as a best-practice example.

Check out the UPS China Survey website to see how different it is from the usual blase survey about small businesses that ends up as a press release on your website and not much more.  It’s quite a bit different, isn’t it?