why you need a PR strategy
Fairly or not, the term “strategy” has gained a reputation as a meaningless buzzword, beloved of the types who talk a big game but disappear when it’s time to deliver the work. But, as any good PR agency will advise, don’t let that trick you into thinking you should throw the PR strategy out with the “all show and no go” folks’ bathwater (eww), otherwise, you’ll be pouring you budget down the drain.
In reality, a PR strategy is the quiet achiever of your campaigns – the force behind the scenes setting it up for success. And while it may trade in a lot of acronyms (seriously, brace yourself) these are just cheat sheets for thoroughness to ensure you’ve thought of everything.
There’s a stereotype in public relations is that practitioners are either super creative or excellent planners. And sure, if you’re brilliant at one, it goes a long way to mitigate your weakness in the other. But the best professionals have a combination of both, they have the memorable ideas and can execute it. There are plenty of creative ideas that achieved nothing, or worse, the opposite of what the brand was hoping for. Success lies in channelling that creativity to where it will have the most impact.
And for that, you need a PR strategy.
What is a PR Strategy?
At its most basic, a PR strategy is the who, when, where, what, why and how of your campaign. It’s asking what you want to achieve and mapping out how you do it. It is not a press release, a research project, a byline or a stunt. Those are tactics to achieve your strategy. Your strategy is why you chose a particular tactic.
Take a recent clever campaign by Cadbury in the UK, in which humorous packaging unevenly divvies up a block of chocolate to reflect the labour that those sharing it had to do. So “who updates the shared calendar” gets about two-thirds of the block, leaving a third for “who goes along to things”. Other divisions included “who presented the slides” vs “who took notes” and “who contributed ‘cheers all’ at the end”.
Undoubtedly creative and bound to get people talking. But there’s a strategy behind it: increasing purchasing moments by positioning Cadbury as a brand that brings people together, and highlighting the many occasions on which a cheeky row of chocolate might be in order.
How Do You Build a PR Strategy?
Here is where the planners have a chance to shine. You need to gather the insights that will inform your approach. At its most basic, it identifies who you want to talk to, what you want them to do and how you will persuade them to do it. It covers:
- your proposition/messaging
- channels
- partners/influencers.
Whether you’re more of a creative or planner type, a PR strategy will improve your achievements. It stress tests your creative thinking to ensure that it will be effective and as for the planners – well, by the time you’ve mapped everything out, you’ve created an environment for the creative ideas to spark.
It’s a good idea to use a strategic framework to build your strategy to make sure you’re covering all bases. There are more of them than they are squares in a family-sized block of chocolate and yes, they love an acronym: RACE, PACE, GRACE, RARE, EAST and ROSIE. The good news is that they more or less cover the same points. There are some situations where one might work better, but they all get you where you need to go, they might just take a different path. The main thing is to pick the one that works for you.
Here, we’ve chosen the OASIS method to illustrate what these elements are, mainly because we’re enthusiasts of BritPop music and no one has yet come up with one called Elastica or Supergrass.
What’s in a PR strategy?
OASIS stands for
1. Objectives
These should set out what your activity wants to achieve. Start with the organisation’s business objectives and develop communications objectives to support them. Sorry to drop another yet another acronym into the mix, but this is a situation that calls for SMART goal setting, so they should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. As as well as saying what will happen and when, it should be expressed numerically where possible and focus on outcomes, not outputs An output is an activity – drafted 4 press releases, whereas an outcome is a result you’ve achieved, say more coverage or website traffic. After all, those four releases might be so craptacular that no one wrote about them. Hardly a win.
2. Audience/Insight
This is zeroing in on who you want to talk to. You can have primary, secondary and other stakeholders, but you probably want to focus on primary to keep things tight. Find out who they are, their personality traits, buying and media consumption habits. Explore how they use what you’re selling, what problems it solves and what worries them generally. It’s also worth looking at what your brand’s competitors are doing, whether it’s working and what is different about your brand.
3. Strategy/Ideas
Your strategy should now basically write itself. You take your insights and think about what they tell you about how you achieve your objectives. Combine your audience with your channel with your key themes and then show how you’ll hit the objective. There are numerous strategies that work depending on the dots you join between the insights, but, whichever one you chose will now be grounded in sound logic.
4. Implementation
These are your tactics: what you will do to create content for the relevant channels that will grab the attention of your audience and position your brand in the way you want. Ideally, pick one big idea that is your central/hero piece – be it a stunt, research or an event. From there you can use – brace yourself_ the PESO method to map out how it will work across all relevant platforms.
- Paid – social media boosting, sponsored content
- Earned – media placement
- Shared – being shared by others on social media
- Owned – your own channels, such as your website, your social media accounts or publishing platform you control.
5. Scoring/Evaluation
This is where you go back to those smart objectives and think about how you will show that this campaign hit them. What metrics show your impact for the brands? These can include:
- Website traffic
- Number of media placements
- Estimated media reach
- Share of Voice
- Whether key messaging cut through
- Increase in social mentions
- Increase in followers
- Increase in inbound leads
- How much you invested to get each pair of eyeballs.
Whether you want to come up with that killer creative idea, want to make sure you execute a campaign with the best chance of success or just want to prove that your work had impact, it all starts with a solid PR strategy. Taking the time to get it right maximises your chances of success in a world awash with noise (and gives you an excuse to reward yourself with a block of chocolate).
Current PR tactics not working? Contact us to discuss how we can develop a strategy that helps you meet your business objectives
