IR and digital is a match made in heaven
By Staffan Lindgren
Working with Investor Relations is all about relationships and trust. So why would digital communication, which is more often utilised by companies as a broadcast media, be the best way to support the company’s IR strategy?
First of all, IR is highly data driven. And digital communication is, if possible, even more data driven. This medium thus lends itself to being more accessible and connective on a numbers level, and this is exactly what IR needs.
Secondly, IR is usually about a few people whose decisions have the potential to have a huge impact on the value of a company. Understanding what makes them tick, I mean, really understanding these decision makers, based on their behaviour and not what they say, is highly valuable.
If the target is private investors, then what we have here is a large number of people, instead of just a few, that are really important to us. Knowing and understanding them is therefore even more critical when working with our IR communication strategies.
Behaviour reveals interests
The behaviour of these decision maker's, when interacting with your content, can reveal a lot about what their interests are.
Some examples, when your IR audience…
- Starts looking into sustainability content a couple of days before your capital market day, you should probably prepare and adjust your content accordingly and ensure sustainability is addressed.
- Begins reading up on previous capital market presentations or browsing particular press releases, this tells you where there is an interest in a topic, so group the content pertaining to that topic together. It might be a product launch, an acquisition or something else.
Bottom line, you benefit from knowing.
Targeting and tracking of key visitors
In most cases, the really important users are hidden in the 10 000 or even 100 000 visitors to the website. These vast numbers simply drown out any usable insight from those few key visitors. Using regular analytics tools to measure KPIs such as total number of page views, downloads or bounce rate is of no meaningful value if you don’t know who has downloaded your content or visited your site.
By using techniques developed in marketing, we can begin to develop profiles of users that come to your website, read your press releases and download your content. Those profiles mean your key visitors go from being ghosts - anonymous users - to identified users with a profile connected to them; email address, company they work for and what interests they have.
In some cases, the identified groups consist only of anonymous users, but if all of the users in that group share the same interest, you can target them based on this. This is a technique called FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) which Google has started using with plans to roll out to advertisers in April.
Regardless of whether you have identified them individually with their consent, or have an anonymous target group, you can direct your key messages to this group knowing that you will reach relevant individuals that have an interest in your services or products.
Based on the behaviour of these users, you will be able to discover insights and draw your own conclusions. If you remove the noise that all of “the other” visitors generate, you will create a very different perspective of what captures interest, and how that interest is changing.
Understand and inspire
All of this leads to a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of your audience and the people that you would like to influence.
Understanding this is the first step towards communicating in a relevant way and in a context where it is welcome.
For us as communicators this is essential when creating concepts and writing your content. Adopting it to context, making sure it is delivered in a way that is welcome and inspiring. All of that, helps us, help you reach your desired audience.
Do you know what your audience thinks, but are not telling you? Do you want to be more efficient in how you communicate with the people that matter to you? Then you need to start listening and paying attention to their consumption habits and behaviour.
See our recent article about being relevant to your audiences or get in touch with us.
