What makes a good PR Strategy?

Having worked in PR and communications for nearly 25 years, it’s fair to say that I’ve written and reviewed a fair few PR strategies.

What I’ve learnt over the years, is that a good PR strategy doesn’t need to be hugely complicated. It doesn’t need to include hundreds of wordy sentences over multiple slides. It shouldn’t require a master's degree to uncover what the actual suggested approach and plan is and it shouldn’t require a small fortune to deliver.

For me, a good PR strategy should set out:

  1. What you want to achieve from your PR activity

  2. Who your strategy is aimed at (your audience)

  3. Why you are taking this approach (based on insights gained and research that you’ve undertaken)

  4. When the activity planned will take place, plus the relevance/importance of these timescales

  5. How you are going to deliver the PR activity and campaigns suggested: what are you going to produce and deliver and through which channels?

Once you have mapped out these elements, it will be much easier to create a PR strategy for your business. So let’s look out how to do this.

What should you include in your PR strategy?

Objectives:

  • An overview of what you want to deliver through your PR strategy and why this is important

Audience:

  • The audience/s you are trying to engage with

  • The media you want to target in order to reach this audience

Key Messages:

  • The big narrative of your activity or campaign

  • The key messages you plan to use to engage your key audience/s

  • An explanation of how you’ll bring to life this messaging through PR activity

Tactics and Timescales:

  • This is the nuts and bolts of your activity plans

  • Set out what you plan to deliver and the channels you intend to use

  • Provide clear timescales alongside each element of the activity

  • Include tangible outputs and deliverables

Metrics:

  • Be clear on how you will measure the activity to demonstrate success

  • Set out how you will report on the activity being undertaken and wherever possible, the return on investment it will deliver

With a fundamental structure in place, it should be much easier to create a PR strategy that will deliver genuine value for your business. As part of your strategy, make sure you include a practical planning template that will keep your activity on track and allow you to brief the necessary teams.

Here’s a simple starter for ten:

For many businesses, investing in a PR resource – external or internal – is a sensible move when looking to drive PR activity. Whether you hire an in-house PR expert or invest in an agency or freelance support, they can help you drive the activity forward and will often have the contacts or insight you need about the industry or market you’re targeting.

But of course, not everyone can afford such an investment and if you’re a small business, it may be that you can do some, or all of it, yourself.

So how do you decide if investing in PR support is worthwhile?

Every business is different, but before you jump in and invest in PR, it’s worth reviewing your objectives and considering:

  • Does your business need PR? Why have you chosen PR as the route to attract your chosen audience?

  • What are your short and long term goals for PR and how will it support your wider marketing and business strategy?

  • Do you have the budget to support these goals?

  • Is now the right time to undertake such activity? Has it been thought through and planned or is it a knee-jerk reaction to circumstances: either may necessitate PR but the resource you need and the activity and outputs are likely to differ

  • How are you going to achieve the results you want? Can you do this yourself? Do you need a freelance consultant or specialist agency to help?

  • Are your timescales viable and if not, what is required to make them so?

In exploring the above, you should hopefully be able to build a much clearer picture of what you want to get from PR and whether it’s right for your business.

It might for example mean:

  • You're ready to get going on PR activity and have a better understanding of the support you need to do this

  • Now isn't quite the right time, but you want to start putting plans in place now so you can activate them when the time IS right

  • For now, you’ve decided to focus on other marketing activity, but you’ll revisit PR at a later date

All of this is of course, fine, and importantly, working through this at the beginning will help save time, money, and resource in the long run.

Effective PR and communications play a crucial role in helping an organisation to achieve its strategic objectives but only if the PR plans are rooted in the strategy themselves with a clear plan for delivery.

Need help figuring out if PR is right for your business and in building a strategy to deliver growth?

Get in touch, I’d love to chat!