Do you show up to work, sit down at your desk and ask yourself, “What shall do today?” With little forethought do you open up the New York Times to read an interesting article about a new business practice and decide to implement it on a whim?
Yeah, that’s pretty stupid, isn’t it? No business own should lead a business willy-nilly. This lack of planning and random approach will keep you in business a whole six months. The problem with this is simple. There’s no plan. Nada!
For small business owners and C-suite executives alike, it doesn’t matter if the company you run serves a community or has global reach; a company without a plan is a rudderless ship adrift in the sea. It has no direction, no compass, and will most likely find itself ship wrecked or waves will tossed it to an fro.
The same is true for small companies that want to build better public relations, strengthen their brand and grow their business. It is growth you want, right? Before we begin, here are two directives to think about before you begin crafting public relations campaign strategies for your company:
- Your communication efforts should follow a strategic plan.
- Your communication plan should be aligned with your company’s strategic plan.
Public relations campaign strategies can help a small business grow in all aspects. It really depends on your goal. And, it depends on how well a public relations campaign and its strategies are planned, executed and evaluated. There are four steps to planning better public relations strategies that get results. In this post you will learn about all of them.
Step 1: Do Background Research
Doing research doesn’t have to be costly, but it should shed real light on the audience you plan to engage. This front-end research also includes a situation analysis, which is an exercise that helps you focus on and identify the actual issues your public relations campaign will address and the strategies to use.
Step 2: Set goals, draft strategies and write measurable objectives
- Goal Setting: In this part of the public relation campaign strategies planning process, you want to define communication goals. A goal can be defined as the big-picture results you are trying to accomplish. You goal should reflect the overall direction of your company. Besides making money, what does your company strive to accomplish every single day?
- Strategy Development: Strategies are statements of general direction you want to take to meet your company’s goal. For our purposes, these public relations campaign strategies are focused on communication, or how you will use communications (marketing, media relations and social media) to drive your goal.
- Write measurable objectives: For public relations campaign strategies to be successful, they need to be supported by measurable objectives. Campaign strategies that are not tied to objectives, which relate to the larger goal of a company, are doomed to fail. Your effort and resources will be waited. Tell me, who wants to waste resources?
Step 3: Message development and tactics
Knowing what messages you want to communicate is important. While this is a subject that we will take a deeper dive into later, it’s important to know that your audience may understand things differently than you do. If you want them to understand your messages, frame them in a manner that the audience will understand.
As for tactics, or the tools to communicate and engage, they are typically identified during the front-end research. By scanning the environment, you will discover which mediums people use most to get information. Because two-way communication is the hallmark of good public relations campaign strategies, you will want to use communication mediums that facilitate two-way communication. That is, find and use tools that allow and encourage your audience to talk back to you.
Step 4: Measure for success
There is no reason not to measure your work. After all, investing in strategies for a public relations campaign is not cheap, so you want to know what you got for your money – how effective were your efforts. Measurements come in different forms and the yardstick you choose it entirely up to you. But the most useful measurements of success are these: sales, sentiment, conversion and behavior change.
One last thing to remember about public relations campaign strategies – they are marathons, not one hundred meter sprints. If you truly want to build enduring relationships, public relations campaign strategies are more like marriages contract and less like one-night stands.
