Public Relations campaigns must be data driven. Data, data, data must guide your thinking and approach. Many, many public relations firms simply follow the crowd. They generate press releases, contact authors and so on. This will get a company’s name out in the market but will not build a brand.

Below are three forms of collecting data:

Market research is research with intent to find information on specific issues, problems or opportunities. It is conducted when a need arises and not on an ongoing basis.

Market intelligence is an ongoing process of obtaining relevant information about the business environment on a formal and informal basis. Formal market intelligence procedures occur when specific personnel are assigned to search for any relevant information on the business environment. Informal market intelligence procedures refer to ongoing scrutiny of newspapers, magazines, industry related publications, relevant books and any other external sources which may contain relevant information on the business environment.

Internal data – refers to collecting data from internal reports of the organization. Internal reports may include billing reports, reports on inventory levels, at cetera.