Creating The Perfect Strategic PR Plan

September 25, 2014/Rachel Hargrave
Recently we were working with a client who wanted to put in place a strategic PR plan. They acknowledged that the place to start was to set and agree clear PR campaign objectives;

but here they were struggling. The Leadership Team within the organisation wanted something extremely measurable on a month-by-month basis. Nothing wrong with that, but ever attempt they had gave them – in their words – “just another set of goals to hit on top of all the rest”. They were losing their way, but more importantly losing their appetite for PR and what it could do for their organisation. Other members of the organisation suggested that the way to go would be to focus the strategic PR plan around targeting messages and content to a defined set of audiences and suggested those audiences to be;

  1. The people they work with (their clients)
  2. The business community
  3. Stakeholders, funders and referrers into their organisation

The Leadership Team liked the idea but worried that they would lead to a less quantifiable set of measurements. It was our job to show how success could be measured. We talked about their social media channels and how they could be more effectively used. We talked about reach – how far your messages travel. We talked about prominence – how high up the page your message is featured, how often it is shared, liked / favourite etcetera. We also showed them how they could track tone, share of voice and page visits giving them a set of month results that would show who they were being read by and therefore how successful they were being in hitting their three distinct audiences. With fears calmed, we set about drafting up their first strategic PR plan. This clearly shows how each channel of both traditional and social media is being targeted and focussed on one or more of their distinct audiences. For more information on setting PR campaign objectives, writing a strategic PR plan and measuring results please download our FREE PR Guide and refer to;

  • Step One: Setting PR Campaign Objectives (and defining what they are!)
  • Step Two: Constructing a Strategic PR Plan
  • Step Three: Measuring Results
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Rachel Hargrave

Rachel has over 30 years of local, regional, national and international communications experience and expertise across a wide variety of clients including FTSE 100 companies, SMEs, micro businesses and start-ups. She also has extensive charity, Not-For-Profit and Community Interest Company experience and happily offers clients working in these areas a 50% discount on all RDZ PR rates.

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