How to Develop a PR Strategy for Your Brand

Now that you’re up to speed on what PR strategies are, here are four tips when developing one for your brand. Don’t forget to enlist the help of a company providing good PR services for your strategy execution. This will help ensure excellent outcomes.

1. Define Your Goals and Objectives

Before you can design a successful PR strategy, you need to know what you want to achieve. Thus, my first tip is to define your goals.

General PR campaign goals include the following:

• To increase brand awareness
• To boost your brand authority
• To manage a crisis

Once you know your goals, you can specify your objectives. These are the specific actions you’ll take to achieve your chosen goals. For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, your general objectives could be:

• To publish press releases in major publications
• To write more blog posts

Let’s say you now have a general idea of your goals and objectives. The next step is to make them SMART. Now, assume your chosen goal is to boost brand awareness. You can make that SMART by making it specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound. So, your final SMART goal could be to boost brand awareness among Gen Z by 10% by the end of February. A final SMART objective for that goal would be to write 10 brand-related blog posts by the end of February.

With that out of the way, decide on the metrics you’ll track when evaluating your campaigns based on your objectives and goals (more below).

2. Establish Key Messages

Key messages are the points you want your audience to retain from a communication. You need to establish them from the get-go to ensure all your PR campaign materials are saying the same thing. That’s the only way you can be assured of achieving your overall PR goals.

For instance, if your goal is crisis management PR, then key messages you may want your audience to retain include: 

• Your brand’s apology 
• Your brand’s actions to rectify the wrong
• Your brand’s commitment to customer well-being

Your established key messages guide your PR content creation. The idea is for your audience to not be left confused about your stance even after being exposed to a wide variety of your PR campaign materials.

3. Choose the Right Communication Channels

Without choosing the right communication channels, it’ll be difficult, if not impossible to get your PR message across to the people who need to hear it. 

The right communication channels will depend on your target audience. Of course, you want to be where your audience is so they can see and consume your messages in the first place. 

That said, here are some communication channels you might want to consider:

• Media relations: It involves forging good relationships with media houses, journalists, and the like. You’ll get the word out about your brand through press releases and scheduled interviews. 
• Social media:  It provides a direct way to sway public opinion in your brand’s favor. You can use these social channels for free to deliver PR messages or leverage influencer marketing. Leverage video production services for the best results. More than 80% of social media users would like to see more videos from brands.
• Blogs: You can maintain a blog on your brand’s website. Create blog posts that position it as a thought leader in its industry.

• Events and sponsorships: These can be excellent PR vehicles for getting your brand out there. Whether you decide to host or attend an event, your presence there will give you visibility and put you face-to-face with your brand’s prospective customers. Additionally, corporate events provide networking opportunities. Charitable sponsorships are also excellent for aligning your brand with social causes and telling the world about your company values.

The number of communication channels you choose should depend on your PR campaign budget. The bigger your budget, of course, the more communication channels you can have.

4. Implement Monitoring and Evaluation

Assume your PR campaign is already up and running. Great! But your job doesn’t end there. You’ll still need to monitor your campaigns. Doing so can help you adjust your PR efforts in real time so you can achieve the best results. 

Just go back to your set KPIs and check your current campaign results. If you’re on track to meeting your KPIs, then continue doing what you’re doing. If you’re not, make the necessary adjustments. 

For instance, if you opted for media coverage, one of your KPIs for brand awareness could be the number of media stories about your brand that have gone live. If your live articles are only half of your target live articles for the month and you have two weeks left until the campaign ends, then a course of action could be to double down on your media outreach efforts.

There are several tools you can use for monitoring your PR campaigns.

Media monitoring tools, for instance, can tell you how many mentions online you received given a period. You can also use a tool like Google Analytics 4 to track page visits, bounce rates, and other metrics. 

Meanwhile, social media platforms’ built-in analytics tools let you track social media engagement metrics like shares and mentions. Use tools like SurveyMonkey to create feedback surveys and get an accurate view of your brand sentiment. 

This data-driven approach to PR will help you make the most out of your PR campaigns.