When to Use Custom Polls to Drive PR Coverage

Omnibus polls are a great option for driving PR for your brand, but if you are considering a more extensive study, or a survey fielded to highly targeted audiences, then a custom survey is likely your best, most cost-effective option. Custom surveys are ideal for audiences such as doctors, C-level executives, IT decision-makers, small business owners, teens and tweens, parents, teachers, and many other audiences.

Below, our Editorial Panel of former journalists have answered some frequently asked questions about using custom polls for public relations outreach. When should I use a custom poll? There are four key factors that typically determine when a custom poll for PR is your best option.

1. Cost-effectiveness - If you want to field a survey of more than ten questions, then a custom poll is your most cost-effective option. At this length, the per-question price for an omnibus survey will be more than the cost of your own custom survey.

2. Specialized Target Audiences - Custom polls are ideal tools for interviewing targeted audiences that do not make up a substantial percentage of the population. Some audiences (such as doctors or small business owners) cannot be reached in significant numbers using an omnibus.

3. Building a News Bureau - One of the most effective PR polling tactics is to build multiple news angles into a survey. This gives your account team multiple angles to choose from when pitching the media - increasing your opportunities for coverage. It also allows you to take advantage of cost efficiencies by fielding a single, more extensive survey, instead of multiple small surveys. We often recommend a combination of evergreen survey angles and more immediate news angles when using this approach.

4. Identifying Large or Complicated Trends - Identifying complicated trends requires a substantial study in order to be credible with the media. Many firms make the mistake of pitching "studies" that are actually only one or two questions. This rarely impresses top-tier media.

Nathan Richter

Nathan is one of the country's premier PR pollsters. As managing director at Wakefield Research, he specializes in helping marketing professionals use research to drive media coverage for their brands. As an experienced brand steward, he has developed successful consumer product and consumer lifestyle campaigns for companies as diverse as Procter & Gamble, Bank of America, and E & J Gallo Winery. Richter has been interviewed on Fox News, NPR, CBS Radio and many other media outlets, and his stories have appeared in the country's largest media including ABC's Good Morning America, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. For more information, go to http://www.wakefieldresearch.com.