Setting Goals for PR Surveys

Setting a goal focuses your efforts and saves time and budget that might have gone to extraneous details.

Long Term

Build brand awareness – Bankrate, a consumer financial services company, publishes monthly surveys such as its Financial Security Index in order to promote its brand.
Demonstrate thought leadership – The Better Sleep Council, an arm of a mattress manufacturer’s associate, used a sleep-habits survey to highlight American attitudes towards sleep, as well as perceptions and misperceptions.
Improve search engine ranking of your site for key terms – HealthPocket, a health plan comparison website, used a survey to improve its ranking for the keyword “physician search”.
Develop content for a content marketing strategy – Evergage, a real-time personalization vendor, has published three annual studies on marketing personalization, in order to generate content for blog posts, ebooks, and webinars.

Leverage a holiday or event for coverage – For instance, PinchMe did a survey about Mother’s Day flowers, AutoPartsWarehouse.com did a survey on consumer attitudes towards electric cars for Earth Day, and TaxSoftware.com researched filing preferences for the U.S. income tax deadline. As the last example shows, almost anything can be tied to an event.
Provide support for a key announcement – For instance, when Lenovo announced its new “table” computer, which can be used by multiple people simultaneously, it shared research on family activities involving technology, gaming, education and entertainment.
Build interest in a conference presentation – NCR published the results of its traveler experience survey to drive traffic to its booth at the Passenger Terminal Expo.
Generate leads – The firm, 1-800 DENTIST, which provides dental marketing services, published a white paper summarizing their dental patient survey results in order to capture leads from dental practices.