How can you use data and analytics to segment and target your key audiences and stakeholders?

1 Identify your reputation objectives

Before you segment and target your audiences, you need to define your reputation objectives. What are the main outcomes you want to achieve with your communication? How do you want to be perceived by your stakeholders? How do you measure your reputation success? Your objectives should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. They should also align with your overall business goals and values.

2 Analyze your existing data

The next step is to analyze your existing data sources to gain insights into your current reputation situation. You can use various data sources, such as surveys, feedback, reviews, social media, web analytics, media coverage, and stakeholder databases. You should look for patterns, trends, gaps, and opportunities in your data. For example, you can identify the most influential, loyal, or dissatisfied stakeholders, the most effective or underused communication channels, the most positive or negative topics or sentiments, and the most relevant or emerging issues or opportunities.

3 Segment and target your audiences

Based on your data analysis, you can segment and target your audiences according to different criteria, such as demographics, psychographics, behaviors, needs, preferences, or expectations. You can use tools like personas, customer journeys, or stakeholder maps to create profiles of your different audience segments. You should also prioritize your segments based on their importance, influence, or potential for your reputation objectives. For example, you can focus on the segments that are most likely to support or harm your reputation, or that have the highest or lowest satisfaction or engagement levels.

4 Customize your communication

The final step is to customize your communication according to your audience segments and reputation objectives. You can use data and analytics to inform your communication decisions, such as what messages to deliver, what channels to use, what tone to adopt, what actions to request, and what feedback to collect. You should also monitor and evaluate your communication performance using data and analytics, such as reach, impressions, clicks, conversions, shares, comments, ratings, or referrals. You should use data and analytics to test, optimize, and improve your communication strategies and tactics over time.