Guest article: Matt Baldwin, Coast
How often do PR and comms teams get involved in their firm’s client listening programmes?
It seems – at least according to our very unscientific poll of a few client listening specialists – not often, if at all. They are missing a trick.
Now, Coast is not a client listening specialist, but there appears to be two very broad types of client surveys.
The online questionnaire sent to hundreds of clients (often with disappointing response rates), and the deep-dive interviews with a small group of carefully selected clients.
Those large surveys tend to be of limited interest to PR and comms teams. Yes, they can give you some lovely data points to support messaging for awards, directory submissions and internal comms, but they rarely provide the depth on which to build compelling media narratives.
Deep-dive interviews, however, offer something far more satisfying.
“These are more than a ‘how are we doing’ exercise,” explains Graham Archbold at Chorus Insight. “Here, you have the opportunity to really get under the skin of a client – and that’s where you find gold.”
That “gold” has traditionally been seen as ways to improve and strengthen client relationships. But it should be more than that. It can provide the insights on which to build media narratives and thought leadership programmes.
It’s the ‘what keeps you awake at night’ questions and the issues-scanning discussions that PR and comms teams need to examine and interrogate. If two or three businesses are raising the same concerns, it is almost certain there will be many more facing the same.
PR and comms teams can use those insights to build op-eds and placed editorials in key media – they are issues grounded in clients’ lived experience. They provide content ideas for blogs and client comms and roundtable discussions.
But care must be taken to ensure content and media placements cannot be traced back to a specific client source. These are discussions held very much in confidence.
Then there are the early warnings those deep-dive interviews can provide. That might be as simple as a slowdown in deals or increased scrutiny from regulators (of more interest to the BD teams), but also potential reputational challenges. Client interviews are unlikely to spell out those challenges in black and white, but a good PR lead should use them to look around corners.
In an ideal world, PR and comms teams should have sight of the discussion guides prepared before client listening programmes begin. Their journalist instincts can often lead to valuable additional questions.
And firms should, Graham adds, avoid the temptation of sharing feedback with only the client relationship partners. “That feedback has value to a much wider internal audience.”
PR and comms teams should interrogate transcripts of interviews carefully and close the feedback loop. That is where real media and thought leadership gold lies.
Matt Baldwin is the joint managing director of Coast, a media relations agency.