183 - How to Develop a Successful PR Strategy
A PR strategy will help you organise your PR activities and make strategic decisions about the best ways to communicate. It can also help you to use the stories in your business to draw in your target audience as well as increase your profile and build brand awareness.
What is your end game?
When creating a PR strategy it’s important to outline your goals and objectives for what you want to achieve.
Who is your target audience?
Your target audience are the individuals, groups and communities that have influence and decision making power over your products or services. They are the ones you are trying to attract and sell to - they are the people you want to communicate with.
To understand who your target audience is start by thinking who would be interested in hearing about your business, who are key decision makers, who will have the greatest impact on the business’ outcomes and who will take action or purchase your products/service.
What are your key messages?
Key messages are the core messages you want your target audience to hear and remember about you and your business. They are an important part of a PR strategy because they can shape your content and communicate a unified message.
You can include key messages in your written and spoken communication to convey a specific message about your business to your target audience.
The best key messages are believable, easy to understand, distinctive, credible, succinct and drive your agenda.
What are your tactics?
Tactics are the activities that will help you to achieve your PR objectives. If we use the example of raising awareness of a new service division, one tactic may be distributing a media release. This would be sent to publications relevant to your industry and target audience with the goal of securing an article about the new service.
Other tactical options include email newsletters, social media campaigns, blogs, public speaking or pitching interesting story ideas about your business to journalists.
Do you have a deadline?
You should also put time frames around each tactic to ensure they are completed in a timely manner.
How to know if it was successful or not?
It’s important to measure the success of your PR strategy. Consider creating your own measurement tools or set key performance indicators (KPIs) for what you want to achieve. You could also measure your success on whether you achieved your goals in the set time frame.
By monitoring your success you can determine whether your PR activities are working and discover the areas you need to improve on. It’s also a good idea to regularly review your PR strategy to ensure it’s working effectively.
Source: huffingtonpost
All the best!
Patty Block
