I spend a lot of time on this blog discussing how great research can impact the overall marketing strategy. It’s a lot of overview and planning, with learning translating into insights and action. But today I actually want to talk about tactical research: telling stories with numbers. When public relations and research collide, communicating stats and figures becomes tremendously effective.
Unfortunately, if you’re like many of the wonderfully creative communications crafters I’ve worked with over the years, numbers and data don’t always flow as easily as messaging and storytelling. That’s why I’ve included some great, practical tips in the following article.
Public relations and data.
It’s a data-driven world, and if you work in public relations, at some point you’re going to run head first into numbers that need to be communicated.
Maybe it’s annual earnings, or year-over-year sales figures. Maybe it’s a record-breaking industry milestone or a statistics-heavy white paper. Across every industry and through many many hooks, public relations pros are constantly coming up against data.
So, what’s the goal? The same as it always is. Tell a great story, and share that story with the world. And to do that, it starts by finding the real story hidden in the figures.
Find out what’s important.
Just like any story you’ve ever crafted and pitched, when you first get the content, you need to understand why it matters.
Example
If you were writing a press release for a senior employee’s promotion, you’d consider that employee’s career path, their future plans, and how the promotion impacts the company. And you’d get all that information from the source.
The same way, when you’re presented with figures, consider what matters most. Ask the data owner what’s special about the numbers and why they matter. Consider how the team arrived at the numbers and the work that went into them.
First and foremost, treat numbers like any other story.
Provide context with anchors.
It helps to add context to your number story, which is why I often recommend anchoring your figures.
An anchor is a comparative benchmark you include in your story to help generate more ‘wow’ out of the data you’re presenting.
Example
Let’s say you have sales figures that show a 15% growth year-over-year in bottom line, and you want to build a story around that. In this case, an anchor might be the average growth among all businesses, or all local businesses, or even the business’s industry.
Pretend you do some research and learn that the average growth of comparative companies in the same period is only 3%. That 3% is our anchor.
Now you have a very interesting story. Your client beat the market by 12 points in y-o-y growth! Or, you could say your client over-performed the industry by five times!
An anchor helps you put perspective on your data, so your audience more rapidly understands the reason your story is so interesting.
Round, and communicate with qualifiers.
Rounding and using qualifiers is one of the most important tools in the data communicator’s toolbox.
Most audiences, especially non-data audiences, have trouble immediately identifying the value of numbers in a story. This is true of almost any number, but it’s especially true when the numbers become more cumbersome or complex. The simpler you can make your figures, the more likely they are to have an impact.
Decimals, for instance, are confusing to our brains. We don’t see 12.3 as somewhere between 12 and 13 – we just see a number, and a three-digit number at that. Whenever possible, chop off that decimal and simplify the figure, in this case, to 12.
Even better, round your figure to the nearest 5 or 0. Our brains naturally react more to 10, 15 and 20 than they do to 11, 14 and 19. So, don’t be afraid to make adjustments to the figure you’re reporting to get you close to a number that makes a mental impact. And don’t be afraid to round down either, because that’s especially where our qualifiers are going to come in.
What is a qualifier? In this case, we’re talking about words like “almost”, “nearly”, “more than”, “above”, etc.
Example
Let’s say you’re reporting a 10.9% increase in demand for industrial real estate. Rounding will either take us to 11 or 10, depending if we’re just trying to chop off the decimal or go to a zero. Now, add a qualifier and see what you get. Our 10.9-percent increase becomes a headline that reads
“Industrial demand rises by more than 10 percent” or “Industrial demand rises by nearly 11 percent.”
Now, you have your story. Both headlines resonate, both make an impact, and with a little testing within your own peer group, you’ll land on the one that tells the most meaningful story for your audience.
Use nontraditional storytelling techniques.
Of course, numbers are tricky to communicate no matter how you frame them, which is why nontraditional storytelling techniques are a final, fantastic way to get your PR message across.
If you have access to an art department, or even some basic skills in PowerPoint, you can recreate data and statistics as graphics. Simple bar charts and graphs, for instance, can often help communicate things like year-over-year sales volume changes or even customer attitude averages from survey data.
Another option is to build a metaphorical story around your figures. If your client out-performed the market several times over, try describing your business as a fast sports car on a freeway with nothing but Jettas. Play out the metaphor further by expanding on performance, direction, etc., and suddenly you have a story that started with data and ended with a vivid picture of why your client is the best.
Numbers might be the figures given to you to pitch, but with some creativity, your storytelling prowess can open an entire world of more engaging hooks that audiences will understand.
Click here to read “What is a Marketing Strategy”.
Tell your story.
Public relations pros already know that storytelling is at the heart of their craft. When numbers enter the playing field, the goal is still the same – craft and pitch a killer story. Using techniques like digging deeper, framing, contextualizing, rounding, and clever storytelling, even the most complex of statistics can become the basis for incredibly engaging content.