Hey there,
It’s your favourite PR consultant and I am back with conversations about all things Public Relations, so let’s talk about Strategic Planning in PR, what is it? How does it work? What do I do? I am here to give you tips and nuggets about how to write a Strategic Plan in PR.
What is Strategic Planning if I may ask? It is a process in which an organization’s leaders define their vision for the future and identify their organization’s goals and objectives. The process includes establishing the sequence in which those goals should be realized so that the organization can reach its stated vision – Tech Target.
For us in PR, it is a process of defining your Public Relations ideas in such a way that it helps to create a pathway for a company’s strategic vision which is based on certain objectives, leading to strategic and tactical approaches which are appropriately measured by identified objectives.
So how does it work? In any PR campaign or plan, you have to set certain goals that are in line with the company goals. To begin with, you set your goals, then objectives, these would help to identify the direction(s) to go and would help at the end of the campaign or plan, to identify whether the goal was achieved or whether the plan was successful.
Usually, this is how a basic strategic plan runs, it can be more detailed but contains the following:
- Background: This contains the basic information about the business, individual or product that you are planning for. It gives context as to why the plan is needed and what has been ongoing for the business in the past. It summarizes the “why” of the plan.
- Objectives: It is what you want to achieve which must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timebound). For instance, your objective may be to increase XYZ’s top of mind awareness by 30% among the Gen Z target group within 9 months.
- Insights (Research): This involves you conducting a lot of research to find out about the current level of awareness, perception, engagement etc. that is needed for the success of your strategic plan. A desk research can help to find out more about the organisation and its competitors. A simple online survey or a telephone call or even a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) could help you understand some of the perception and sentiments your target audience have of the business or individual. It also helps in conducting a competitive analysis of the competition, where you conduct a comparison to see where the business is currently at and where their competition lies. All of these will help you in making an informed decision in your planning process.
- SWOT Analysis: This includes an analysis on the brand’s Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats that may affect the business.
- Target Audience Analysis: This involves understanding and analysing your ideal target audience based on some certain factors. The most common are their demography and psychography, but we will include their spending habits, their persona, their purchasing patterns and consumption rate as well. These will help you track your bulls eye, which is the ideal person for you to target all your activities towards.
- Findings and Communication Challenge: Based on all the research and analysis done, it is important to draw out findings and conclusions which will form the basis of your strategic plan. It helps you in understanding and creating a befitting strategy that works for your client.
- Strategy: This is the how of the plan, in terms of how you want to achieve your objectives. It is usually the central idea of the plan which is based on the insights and research and helps to put your ideas in a specific direction. Sometimes, there is an approach to it, you may want to start with a pre stage, then actual phase and a post phase, or you may want to approach a multi channel dimension. The strategy helps to connect everything and fit it in. Other times, there is a big idea which all activities are directly tied to.
- Tactical Approaches/Communication Activities: This is the what of the plan, in terms of what activities are we going to do? Here the different public relations activities are identified in a way that is also aligned with the strategy. Here, you decide if you want to go through the press release route, or the events route or any of the other PR activities that can be done.
- Communication Platforms: At this phase, you choose what channels you want to use to communicate your Key Messaging, whether TV, Social Media, Blogs, Radio etc. based on the tactical approach identified.
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): These are the indicators for success which the client would judge you by. It could range from impressions to number of mentions to sales and profit margins.
- Measurement and Evaluation: Here the success of the campaign is tracked and measured using monitoring tools. These are often benchmarked against the objectives identified.
- Timelines: This is when the activities will be carried out and how soon they can begin or end for the next phase to commence.
- Budget: The budget contains the financial aspect, where the cost to carry out the plan is clearly stated with rationale for some of the costs and how they are the best prices.
These and more make up a strategic plan. I have given you the basics of a plan which I hope you will start implementing in your PR planning. Read my last post on being scattered yet having the ability to plan.
I hope you enjoyed reading up to this point, thank you! Join me weekly in my journey into the PR world where I discuss challenges, tips, pointers, and wins in the PR career space. See you soon!
Warm regards,
The PR Chic
