Ever wondered why some businesses thrive while others struggle? A big part of the answer lies in public perception. A poor public image can lead to lost customers and dwindling profits, spelling disaster for any business. On the flip side, a positive public image can foster customer loyalty and boost your bottom line.
That’s why if you want your business to succeed, you need to take your public relations seriously. Crafting and implementing a solid PR plan is key.
In this article, we’ll walk you through how to write a PR plan and implement it for your business. Follow these four steps:
1. Define Objectives and Target Audience
The first step to writing an effective PR plan is to define your objectives and target audience.
Setting PR objectives and identifying target audiences is essential if you want to run a successful PR campaign. Objectives serve as guideposts that tell you whether your public relations campaigns are making headway. Likewise, intimate knowledge of your target audience ensures your messaging resonates with current customers and potential customers alike.
To define your objectives, think about why you’re conducting public relations activities. Perhaps you’re looking to raise the public’s awareness levels ahead of a new product launch. Or maybe you want to drown out the negative noise about your brand.
Make sure you specify your success metrics based on your objectives, too. For instance, you might conclude your PR campaign is a success if X percent of people on social media have a positive perception of your brand afterward. Make your success metrics as specific as possible.
Defining your target audience is equally as uncomplicated. Just answer the following question:
- Who do you want to talk to?
Then based on that, you can create an audience persona that will serve as your guide when crafting PR messages. You can send surveys to your target audience directly or use analytics tools to determine their demographics, preferences, and other relevant characteristics. The more detailed your audience persona, the better you can tailor your PR messaging to your target audience.
If you have a hard time answering all these questions, you can avail of good PR services. Experienced professionals can give your PR campaign the direction it needs. They can also easily help with media coverage if needed. These are companies that already have a huge PR network, after all.
2. Develop Key Messages
The next step to writing a strategic PR plan is to develop key messages and strategies.
Key messages are the specific points you want your audience to take away from your PR campaign. They succinctly describe or reiterate what your company stands for, its value proposition, and its unique selling point.
To develop your key messages, just go back to your objectives. Let’s say you want to change the public’s perception of your brand as a company that doesn’t care about its employees. Based on this objective, the key message you’d want your audience to take away from your PR efforts would be:
- That you’re a great employer.
So, based on this, your other secondary PR messages could be:
- You provide your employees with excellent benefits.
- That you ensure your employees have a work-life balance.
- That your employees are given opportunities for growth in the company.
Once you’ve determined your PR messages, you can determine the PR strategies you’ll implement.
3. Create an Action Plan
An action plan is exactly what it sounds like a detailed list of actions you plan to take during a specified time-frame. There are several benefits of creating one. An action plan:
- acts as a step-by-step guide to reaching your PR and business goals.
- helps you identify the resources you’ll need and manage the ones you have.
- keeps your team accountable and on schedule.
- can help you track your progress.
To determine the PR strategies you’ll include in your action plan, just go back to the key PR messages you determined you’d disseminate through your campaign.
So, if we take the example above, there are several PR strategies you can implement to make your target audience believe you’re a great employer.
Your PR strategies could include including employee video testimonials in your social media posts, writing press releases about the success stories of chosen employees in your company, and writing blog posts on your website about your recently-held team-building activities.
Specify who will be in charge of each public relations strategy and the tasks associated with it in your action plan. Who will be in charge of writing the press releases on employee success stories and the blog posts? Who will send the press releases to the media?
You’ll want to determine the tools they’ll need to accomplish their tasks in your action plan as well. So, in this case, your team might need an email finder for their outreach to media outlets and generative AI to help them write the press releases. You might have to give them access to project management software, too.
Include a deadline within which each task should have been accomplished. The more detailed your action plan is, the better.
4. Implement, Monitor, and Evaluate
With steps one to three done, it’s time to implement your PR plan. Just follow your plan to the letter. If you create a detailed action plan, you shouldn’t encounter as many hiccups in your PR campaign.
Along the way, don’t forget to monitor your progress. Monitoring your plan’s progress is as straightforward as using your action plan and objectives as guides. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you on track to meet your deadlines?
- How many of the tasks in your action plan has your team executed?
Your answers will tell you where you’re at so you can make adjustments if necessary. For instance, you could allocate more people to your press release writing team if you see you’re behind deadlines.
After your PR campaign, you’ll want to check if your PR plan as a whole was effective in the first place. Just go back to your PR campaign objectives. Have they been met? In this case, did you manage to get across the message that you’re a great employer? You’d have to conduct a sentiment analysis to see whether there has been a shift in public perception.
If you met your objectives and got your key PR messages across based on your assessment, great! If you didn’t, go back to your PR plan and try to determine what went wrong. You’ll want to take note of these things so the next time you implement a similar PR campaign, you won’t make the same mistakes.
In Closing
Writing a PR plan and implementing it is, in a way, key to the success of your business. You learned how to do that with this article.
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know how to write a PR plan. Just define your objectives and target audience, develop your key PR messages, and include your specific strategies in your public relations plan. Finally, implement, monitor, and evaluate.
With these tips, you’ll be a master at running PR campaigns. Good luck!
