Five reasons why your survey isn’t getting any publicity
In our media training courses for consumer brands and other companies we often find ourselves helping PR consultancies and in-house media relations teams to gain publicity for surveys that they’ve commissioned.
Our media trainers are all working journalists operating under strict non-disclosure agreements. This means that they receive hundreds of press releases, email pitches and approaches from PR contacts every year with information about a new survey.
The vast majority will be ignored. This is a shame since commissioning surveys isn’t cheap and having to tell clients and colleagues that they’ve got little, or no traction is embarrassing.
So, if you’re asking, “Why didn’t our survey get any media coverage?” here are five possible reasons.
1. It doesn’t tell us anything unusual.
The findings might be accurate and informative but if they’re what we’d expect anyway then we won’t be interested. We provide media training for financial services firms. We worked with one financial services company that had commissioned a survey whose top line was that nearly a third of those asked felt that they would like more information about their pensions and savings.
Hardly surprising, really, isn’t it? Creating questions which will identify something surprising, counter intuitive, quirky or controversial is key to developing a survey that will gain greater publicity. In our media training for consumer brands, we start our courses by exploring what makes a story for journalists and anything that is unusual features pretty prominently on this list.
So, if you’re looking to create a survey that will generate media coverage, then ensure that you’re in a good position to tick this unusual box.
2. It’s not relevant.
Do we really care? Do the subject and the findings of the survey affect the everyday lives of people and businesses? These are the kind of questions that you need to be asking when you’re developing a survey. There might be issues that are vaguely of interest to your target audience but unless they focus on concerns that are fundamental to people’s economic welfare, their health and their relationships you won’t get much interest.
When we provide media training for consumer brands or financial services companies looking to generate publicity from their surveys, we drill down in our role play media interviews, asking them how this really affects the audience. After these practise media interviews, we look at how participants on our media training workshops could steer the interview in a direction that will gain greater publicity. Very importantly, we also give them tools and techniques to ensure that they don’t end up saying something embarrassing or too controversial.
3. It promotes the positive rather than the negative.
In our immediate training courses for consumer brands, we look at what makes a media story and what interests journalists. The truth is that trouble, a risk or something going wrong is far more newsworthy than everything being fine. We recently worked with the Communications team of a consumer brand that had commissioned an extensive health-related survey.
It was only when we looked through all the results that we found some bad news. When they focused on this in the press release, they got the coverage they were looking for. We then helped them to turn it positive by identifying some solutions to the problem that they had highlighted in the survey.
4. It’s not topical.
The release of a survey is obviously new and topical but it’s not necessarily new and topical enough on its own.
Similarly, the survey might identify some surprising and attention-grabbing headlines but it’s far more likely to gain media coverage if it fits with some current themes or trends. In our Media Training for consumer brands, we look at how journalists and editors like trends. The media loves the zeitgeist. Over the last few years, a survey exploring issues relating to saving money or working from home, for instance, would have got more coverage than one on a random subject that is not necessarily currently in people’s minds. These issues are probably slightly past their sell by date now. However, a survey that asks questions that are very much of the moment or that tap into people’s current concerns and interests is more likely to get publicity than one that doesn’t.
As working journalists our media trainers will tell you that they are forever writing or saying: “A growing number of people…,” or “More and more companies are…” Increasing demand for this or growing interest in that will always grab our attention as journalists. If your survey taps into these trends, then you’re more likely to get publicity for it.
5. The most interesting findings are buried too far down in the press release.
We’ve noticed a considerable interest in our press release writing courses for consumer brands and our PR training for companies. As part of this we look at a range of press releases, both good and bad. It’s interesting to see how a badly written press release can bury the interesting news a third or even halfway down. The problem is, though, as we say in our press release writing workshops, that most journalists or editors won’t even get that far. They’ll have dismissed your press release dash and your survey dash as they move on to the next possible story.
We don’t want to depress you. There’s still plenty of opportunity to gain publicity from a carefully created and effectively promoted survey. As we say in our media training courses and press release writing workshops for consumer brands, even if a survey doesn’t get media coverage immediately, it might still do so weeks or even months later as journalists are researching a report and are looking for relevant information.
So, surveys are worth doing, but backing them up with our media training for consumer brands really helps.
Media training courses for PR consultancies and in-house media relations teams.
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