Seven steps to digital PR audience research that earns coverage

What to take away

Campaign-first working looks efficient because the story is the visible part. It also produces a press release aimed at everyone, which in practice means no journalist recognises it as being written for their readers.

Audience research moves that question to the front: whose behaviour are we trying to explain, and can we prove that group exists at the size we claim? This guide sets out a repeatable method for England-based teams, with seven steps, three areas of evidence and the questions to ask before money is committed.

Start with the public, not the campaign

Two decisions come before any data collection. First, who the audience is. Second, which of the two audiences you actually mean.

Define the audience in one sentence

Write a single sentence that names the group, the geography and the reason they matter. For example: adults in England who switched energy supplier in the past year and now read reviews before they buy anything else.

If the sentence needs a comma-spliced list of five descriptors, it is not a definition, it is a wish. A tight definition makes the next six steps possible. A loose one guarantees you will argue about the results later.

Groups defined by behaviour travel further than groups defined by demographics. Journalists can write about people who did something. They struggle to write about people who merely are something.

Once the definition is settled, build the profile properly. The method in this guide to digital PR buyer personas: data and sources shows how to turn a one-line definition into a working persona without inventing detail.

Separate the reader from the linker

Digital PR has two audiences and they are not the same. The first is the reader a journalist is trying to serve. The second is the journalist or site owner who decides whether to link to you.

Research both. For the reader, you need behaviour, worries and vocabulary. For the linker, you need beat, deadline patterns and what their outlet has already covered this month.

Researching the linker is quicker than it sounds. Read the outlet's last ten relevant articles, note the angles they favour, and check whether they credit sources by name.

Confusing the two produces pitches that explain the topic to an expert and flatter the reader with detail they already know. Keep two short profiles side by side and check each draft against both.

A useful test: read the pitch headline aloud and ask which of the two profiles it is written for. If the answer is neither, the campaign is still looking for an audience.

Gather evidence you can cite

Published evidence answers two questions: how big a group is, and how it behaves. Scale usually comes from national statistics, while platform tools and panel research tell you more about reach and habit. Each source has limits worth stating in the brief.

Use national statistics for scale

Scale claims are the easiest thing for a sceptical journalist to check, so get them right. The Office for National Statistics publishes internet access figures for households and individuals, which give you a defensible baseline for how many people in the UK are online at all.

That baseline matters because it caps everything else. If you claim a campaign reached a demographic that is less connected than average, you need to say so and explain why the story still works.

The reference tables break results down by age, region and household type, so you can describe a subgroup rather than a national average. Subgroup stories are usually the ones journalists take.

For behaviour rather than reach, Pew Research Centre's internet and technology research covers how people use platforms, search and news. Pew's samples are largely United States-based, so treat the findings as directional for a UK audience rather than a direct substitute for national data.

When you quote any of this, name the source and its release date in the sentence itself. A named dataset with a year is a line a journalist can use. "Research shows" is not.

Where two sources disagree on the same number, say so in the brief and explain which one you are relying on.

Use platform data for targeting

Platform advertising tools are free audience research. LinkedIn's audience targeting documentation sets out how job title, seniority, industry and location can be combined, which lets you size a business audience before you pitch to a trade title.

Use it for two things. First, a rough count: how many people hold the job you are writing for? Second, a language check: which job titles and industries does the platform actually recognise?

The second use is underrated. If the platform cannot find your audience by name, journalists probably cannot either, and the pitch will read as vague.

Geography filters are worth testing early. Sizing a business audience for England alone, rather than the UK, changes the number you can defend, and the smaller figure is usually the honest one for an England-only story.

Platform counts are not population counts. They reflect people with accounts, not people in the country, so present them as a floor rather than a total. For consumer work, the equivalent exercise belongs in a broader digital PR target audience: data and sources review, which covers where to find reachable groups beyond business platforms.

Understand what panel data can and cannot say

Panel research tracks the same people over time, which is why it can describe change rather than a single snapshot. Nielsen's explainer on what panel data is and why it matters is a useful grounding if you plan to make claims about shifts in behaviour.

Panels have known weaknesses. They under-represent people who will not join, and they drift as members drop out. Say so when you cite one. A caveat handled openly reads as competence, not weakness.

If you are commissioning your own survey instead, the tooling choices matter more than most teams expect, and this comparison of digital PR survey tools: data and sources covers sampling, weighting and cost.

Work through the seven steps

The sequence in order

Steps four and five are where most campaigns stall, because both can produce an answer you did not want. Treat that as useful. A weak audience found in week one is cheaper than a weak campaign found in month three.

Steps one and two take an afternoon. Steps three and four often take a week, because published data rarely arrives in the shape you want it.

Run step five before you commit a commissioning budget. If three national outlets covered the same angle last month, a better dataset will not rescue the idea.

Turn findings into a brief

A research output is only useful if a writer can act on it. Keep the brief to one page: audience definition, two friction points, three citable numbers with sources and dates, the vocabulary list, and the outlets already covering the beat.

Build the vocabulary list from what people actually said, not from what the category calls itself. Internal language rarely matches the words a reader types into a search box.

Anything that does not change what gets written should be cut. Long research documents feel thorough and get ignored.

Send the brief to whoever writes the pitch, not only to whoever commissioned the research. A document that stays in a shared drive changes nothing.

Set a review date. Audience behaviour changes, and a definition agreed in one quarter can be stale two quarters later, particularly around platform habits.

Budget, rules and review

Cost follows audience choice

A tightly defined audience is usually cheaper to research. You need fewer sources, fewer interviews and less data cleaning. A broad audience sounds ambitious and quietly multiplies the work.

Costs also vary by method. Desk research using published statistics is the cheapest option. Original surveying costs more, and the price depends on sample size and how hard the group is to reach.

Our digital PR: costs and budget guide for England breaks down where the money goes. It helps when a client asks why two campaigns carry different price tags for the same deliverable.

For example, a team paying £400 a month for desk research only is buying a very different service from one paying £4,000 a month for original survey work with a nationally weighted sample. Both can be right. Neither is right without a defined audience.

Ask any supplier which method they are quoting for before you compare prices. Two proposals can look similar on the page and describe completely different work.

Advertising rules and who to ask

If your campaign involves anything that could be read as advertising, including paid amplification of a story, the Committee of Advertising Practice codes apply.

The ASA and CAP publish their personnel and contact structure, which is the practical starting point if you need to raise a question about how a rule is applied.

Sector rules add conditions on top. Financial promotions, health claims and advertising to children each carry extra requirements, so check the relevant section of the code rather than the general principles alone.

This is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for reading the codes. It is a reminder that audience research feeds directly into compliance: knowing who will see a claim tells you which rules are in play.

Keep a short note of which rules you checked and when. It takes minutes and saves an awkward conversation later.

Common questions

How many sources are enough for a digital PR audience brief?

Three well-dated sources will usually carry a campaign: one for scale, one for behaviour, one for the specific decision you are writing about. More sources add confidence but also add review time, so stop when the brief can be defended in a meeting.

Can I use platform audience estimates as population data?

No. Platform estimates count accounts, not people, and they exclude anyone who has not signed up. Use them to show a floor and to test whether your audience is findable by name, then pair them with national statistics for the headline number.

How often should audience research be repeated?

Review the definition each quarter and rebuild the evidence base once a year, or sooner if a platform changes how it categorises audiences. Behaviour tends to move faster than population data, so check the behavioural sources first.

Does this method work outside England?

Much of it transfers, but the data does not always. National statistics differ across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so check the relevant national source before quoting a UK-wide figure for a devolved topic such as education or health.