The Importance of Starting Out with a Strategic Plan
Public relations plays a huge role in your brand’s public image, reputation and much more. To deliver maximum return on investment, there needs to be a strategy behind any PR campaign that aligns with your objectives and sets you up for success, as well as removes any foreseeable barriers, finds clarity, and ultimately helps you exceed your goals.
Yes, it is true that a good PR campaign reaches the right audience and gets people talking. Good PR may even include a kick ass event, a beautifully written press release, or a skillfully crafted pitch, but there is so much more that takes place behind the scenes before pen touches paper.
If you’re looking to create and execute an awesome PR campaign that enhances your brand value, increases sales, builds positive relationships with your customers and/or spreads major word-of-mouth envy, you need to start with a strategy – and that comes in the form of a strategic plan.
Every successful PR Plan contains 3 very simple characteristics:
Goals/Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are clearly identified
For example, are you looking to achieve: consumer awareness for a new product or service, event attendance, enhancing brand reputation, social media growth, increasing in sales, product trial, lead generation, leadership position, and the list goes on…A maximum of three key messages identified to help achieve your set goal/KPI
NOTE: Why 3? Glad you asked. The human brain is trained to remember things in threes. Keep your key messages simple and easy, no jargon, so they are easy to remember and recite.Clearly identify your target audience and platform channels. This is really important because as your audience changes, so will your platform of choice (i.e. broadcast, digital, social media, magazine, trades…) and your messaging. It’s super important to make sure that you’ve identified your audience and the right message to help convert those eyeballs into action.
For example: if you’re looking to target millennial consumers, having your messaging featured in a publication geared towards boomers won’t yield the results you’re looking for.
When setting up a PR campaign strategy don’t forget to scan the market, see what competitors are doing well and what they’re not to help you set a realistic benchmark.
Whether or not you’re bringing on an agency to help you create and execute a strategic PR plan, it’s important to create a PR brief that doesn’t suck. Below are a few questions you want to make sure you’ve answered in order to create the best possible strategic plan.
Start the process by asking:
What’s the goal and what’s the timeline for reaching that goal?
What are you trying to communicate?
Who are you trying to reach and why? (Once the strategy is created, will the messaging resonate with that audience?)
Where is your target audience most likely to consumer their news/content?
What is important for your target audience? For example: how does your product/service add value to the public and why will they care?
Are there any pain points for the end-user and will your product/service/campaign help to solve it?
Who are the media and influencers with relationships to my industry/audience?
What outlets and platforms do you need to be on/in?
Who are your biggest competitors and what are you doing differently from them to differentiate yourself?
How will you measure success? (i.e. media impressions, brand mentions, website traffic, number of quality leads, or other)
Lastly, without a PR budget, it will be very difficult to strategize on a plan effectively. Crafting a PR budget begins with clear objectives. From there you can determine the tools and resources you’ll need to be successful.
The good news is that you don’t always need a huge PR budget to be successful, that said, a PR agency can help determine the best level of investment based on your goals, and/or advise if expectations aren’t aligned, as well help you to create a scalable budget that can grow with you and your goals.