PR Planning: Mapping Out Your Strategies, Tactics

With all due respect to all those stereotypical males out there who hate to ask for directions, the fact is that even if the territory is somewhat familiar, if you dont have a roadmap and follow its directions, youre going to get hopelessly lost.

So it goes with your PR program. If you truly intend to have a proactive media \r relations program, rather than one that just reacts to news developments, a plan is \r essential to ensure you stay on track with not just with tactical details, but with your \r organizations overriding business goals and objectives.

Here are some guidelines to establishing a plan that will put and keep you on track:

Start by analyzing your organizations positioning and how it is perceived by the \r markets you serve, particularly vis a vis your competitors. Look at your menu of \r offerings, in terms of products, services or areas of expertise, or at the underlying \r challenges your organization faces.

Identify and prioritize your key imperatives according to your organizations most \r pressing business needs. Your mandates from management, for example, might be \r to develop PR approaches to help support the trial and launch of a new product or \r service, to support an existing specialty that may have been neglected for past lack \r of resources, and to generally help bolster the business brand.

A mini plan of attack should be designed for each imperative that incorporates the \r overall strategy for the project, how it will be supported tactically (audience and \r media markets targeted, vehicles used, such as news releases, surveys, or bylined \r articles), implementation timelines and assigned responsibilities, and, ideally, how \r the PR tactics will dovetail with marketing tactics in terms of everything from \r messaging to timelines.

To better support an existing specialty service, for example, perhaps the strategy is \r to develop a program that underscores your expertise and thought-leadership in \r that arena. Youd identify markets of your buyers, media markets that cater to their \r interests, ideas for a series of bylined articles on issues or trends tying in with that \r service to be positioned with those media outlets, a timeframe and responsibilities \r for article development and pitching, and a plan for how the placed articles should \r be used (e.g. links to a PDF incorporated into a direct mail piece or client \r newsletter).

You should also figure out estimated costs, in terms of internal staff time, PR \r agency fees (if you use one) and ancillary costs (reprint permissions/PDFs, clipping \r service, etc.), as part of the plan. You may, in fact, have to pare back or bolster \r your initiatives depending on what the numbers tell you.

Moreover, those numbers tie into another important component of the plan: how \r you anticipate measuring the effectiveness of the program. Return on investment is \r one (though not the only) way to go for which youll need total spendings as well \r as a way to tie those spendings to such measurable results, like more business \r coming over the transom.

Developing a PR plan takes time and energy, but is essential to bringing focus to \r your PR program. Ideally, youll get the structure in place so that each year, the \r planning gets easier, the metrics help prove out where refinements are needed, and \r your value is substantially demonstrated to management.

Sally Saville Hodge is president of Hodge Communications, Inc., specializing in \r strategic public relations and marketing communications for businesses, \r entrepreneurs and professional associations. Formerly an award-winning financial \r journalist, she brings over 30 years experience to client engagements. Subscribe \r today to Communic@te! our free bimonthly e-newsletter and get a free special \r report: Using Buzz To Create a Groundswell For Your Business. Visit http://www.hodgecommunications.com

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