New Methods for Modern PR Strategies - 2024/2025
Brands of any size and shape needs a well-planned and executed Public Relations strategy to survive the turbulent waves of their niche markets. You are here because you need a badass PR Strategy, right? Then you have come to the right place. This blog will share the latest PR industry insights for your business or personal success. Starting by defining what it means, its importance, its elements, the process of planning, implementation and changes needed, plus some of its flexibilities in sustaining brand awareness and visibility.
Understanding a PR strategy
A Public Relations strategy is a plan designed to manage and improve how the public sees and engage with an organization or individual. It involves setting clear objectives, identifying target audiences and crafting key messages in a storytelling manner to communicate effectively with those audiences. It answers the most important question, Who, What, Where, Why, When and How. (5Ws & H)
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The strategy outlines specific tactics and actions, such as media outreach, social media engagement, press releases and business events to achieve these objectives. It also includes measures for monitoring and evaluating the success of PR activities to ensure that they align with the overall business goals and adapt to changing situations.
In other words, having a strategy gives a roadmap you can use to achieve your goals. A PR strategy is essential for building and maintaining a positive reputation, managing crisis and maintaining strong and mutually-beneficial relationships with stakeholders.
In the modern world, PR strategies means implementing digital tactics such as the use of search engine optimization (SEO) to improve brand visibility and engagement on online communication platforms.
Components of a good PR Strategy
⦁ Begin with research
Every strategy you are trying to come up with should be on the basis of research. This includes both internal and external factors that affect your brand either positively or negatively. To do this, a SWOT analysis is your best bet. It examines the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
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Strengths: you must look at what your business has done or used in the past and succeeded. These may include checking the different strategies you have used to ensure more media coverage, stakeholder engagement on social media platforms, increase in the number of new followers and conversions from the previous campaign that you once did.
Weaknesses: Try to identify the grey spots that your PR team might have missed in ensuring maximum results for your previous PR strategy. Look at past campaigns to identify areas where they fell short. Did certain messages not resonate? Were there issues with timing or channel selection? Understanding these weaknesses helps in avoiding the same pitfalls in future strategies.
Review feedback from your audience and stakeholders to uncover any negative perceptions or areas of dissatisfaction. This could involve analysing social media comments, survey results, or direct feedback from stakeholders.
Opportunities: To see opportunities, you must look mostly outside your business. You can start by searching for emerging trends that people love in the market, use those to reap improved PR strategy results when you implement plans. Opportunities can also mean looking at what your competitors are lacking or doing wrong and using innovative ways to improve or change the narrative. Things like new social media platforms, changes in consumer behaviour and technological advancements must be your best friends.
Threats: These are also external factors that might cause issues and crisis in an organization if not handled well. In most cases, opportunities arise from threats because you have to take a look at what the competitors are doing best and try to think out of the box. Threats may include a competitor brand launching their bigger and better campaign the day you launched yours. It might be a bad coincidence because they would have also done their timing research.
It is advised to use social listening tools to find out information that might be of harm to your brand and its success.
⦁ PR goals
Clearly define what you want to achieve with your PR strategy. Doing this will solidify your idea of having a strategy from the first place. Objectives might include increasing your brand awareness, improving public perception, driving website traffic or boosting your social media engagement. Ensure your objectives are always SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and has a Time-frame). For instance, instead of saying “increase media coverage,” try to specify and say “increase brand mentions in media by 20% over the next six months.” You can clearly see that this goal covers all the elements of a SMART objective, see the table below:
Bonus tip, always prioritize your objectives based on what will have the most significant impact on your business goals as it will also help you spend your resources wisely.
⦁ Determine your target audience and messages
As a business, your audience and target market must among your first priorities because these are the people or entities that help grow your business by showing interest in what you have to offer among the pool of other choices to choose from.
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Steps you can take are:
⦁ Audience: Your audience could be current customers, potential customers, industry influencers, members of the media and other key industry stakeholders.
⦁ Segment your audience: Break down your target audience into smaller groups based on demographics, psychographics and geographics plus behaviours. This allows for more tailored and effective messaging.
⦁ Create specifically tailored messages: Develop key messages that resonate with each audience segment. In PR, messages shared are either to educate, inform, motivate and affect perception so ensure these messages are clear, compelling and aligned with your brand values. Your messages must address the strengths and opportunities identified in your SWOT analysis to highlight what sets your brand apart and how you can meet your audience’s needs.
It is also important to make sure your messages are engaging and has a call to action because you don’t want to send out information to read, see or hear then people don’t do anything about it.
⦁ Consistent communication: Always maintain a consistent tone and style across all channels and platforms. This helps reinforce your brand identity and makes your messaging more recognizable. Joe Pulizzi from the Content Marketing Institute notes, “The essence of this strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.”
⦁ Strategy formation
In choosing ways to deliver ways you will reach your objectives and share messages to your target audience; you can never go wrong with selecting the most effective channels to reach your different audience groups. These may be social media platforms, blogs, press releases, events, newsrooms and influencer partnerships. This is to ensure each of your audience receive your messages how they prefer.
Plan your content in advance with a content calendar that outlines what will be produced, when and on which platforms. Creating a content calendar helps keep your audience engaged and allows you to improve your strategy based on what works best. Another thing, building relationships with key media contacts and regularly pitching relevant story ideas can help secure more coverage and establish you as a reliable source.
⦁ Budget planning
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Creating a budget is crucial to ensure you have the necessary resources and strategies to reach your goals. When budgeting, factor in the costs of both earned and paid media. PR teams usually set aside funds for tools, paid promotions, events and agency services. These services might include outsourcing PR agencies that will help with writing, pitching and publishing. Also design agencies that will work with your team to create content.
It is important to invest in tools for publication, measurement, distribution, project management and automation. Do not forget to budget for unforeseen circumstances as well because you can never know an occasion that might bring crisis.
⦁ Implementation
In this step, you must follow your action plan closely to ensure all tasks are completed on time and to a high standard. Maintain coordination with your team for consistency and be adaptable should the need arise, if something isn’t working as planned, don’t hesitate to make adjustments based on feedback and performance metrics. Through internal communication, ensure all departments including marketing, sales and customer service are aligned with the PR strategy for a unified approach.
⦁ Monitoring and evaluation
After all the hard work you and your team has done, the last thing to do is track key metrics using tools like Google Analytics to see the progress and success of your PR activity.
Regularly analyse this data to understand what’s effective and where improvements can be made. Trends and patterns can inform your future PR activities or attempts. Use these insights to refine your strategy, adjusting tactics and messaging as needed to improve effectiveness and achieve your goals.
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Key Performance Indicators/Metrics to track include:
⦁ Conversion rates
⦁ Website traffic changes
⦁ New client count
⦁ Improvements in search rankings
⦁ Email subscriber growth
⦁ Organic media coverage/mentions
⦁ Website bounce rate
⦁ Word-of-mouth mentions
⦁ Audience sentiment analysis
⦁ Email click-through rates
⦁ Stakeholder satisfaction
⦁ Track mentions
⦁ New follower count
⦁ Comments
⦁ Shares
⦁ Post reach
⦁ Crisis management
Prepare for potential PR crisis by developing a crisis management plan with tested responses, key contacts and communication protocols. Train your spokesperson and other employees to handle media inquiries effectively to providing clear and accurate information. In the event of a crisis, you must act quickly, transparently and address the issue head-on while keeping your audience informed to maintain trust and credibility.
An example of a SMART PR strategy
The 2023 Snoop Dogg’s Smokeless Campaign
Snoop Dogg’s smokeless fire pit campaign was a clever PR strategy and stunt that grabbed attention by combining the unexpected. Known primarily for his music and cannabis culture, Snoop’s partnership with a smokeless fire pit company was exciting and drew curiosity. The product appealed to a wide range of people, from outdoor enthusiasts to families seeking safer and more enjoyable fires. Highlighting benefits like reduced smoke inhalation and a more pleasant experience, the campaign aligned with health and wellness trends, making the product more attractive.
The campaign generated a lot of buzz in both traditional and social media thanks to Snoop Dogg’s large following. His involvement added authenticity and a personal touch, making the product more appealing and trustworthy. By promoting a smokeless fire pit, Snoop positioned himself as a forward-thinking influencer who supports innovative technology. This move associated him with positive, enjoyable experiences that strengthened his image more as someone who values comfort and innovation.
Frequently Asked Questions
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⦁ How can AI enhance PR strategies?
AI tools improves engagement, speed and effectiveness of tasks that typically takes a human being hours or days to complete.
⦁ What are the key components of a successful PR strategy?
Essential components include defining clear PR goals, identifying the target audience, crafting key messages, choosing appropriate PR tools and measuring success.
⦁ How do you measure the success of PR efforts?
Success can be measured through KPIs such as media coverage, social media engagement, website traffic and audience sentiment analysis among others using various media monitoring tools.
⦁ What role does market research play in PR?
Market research helps in understanding the audience better, which in turn helps in drafting impactful PR strategies and tailoring messages to align with the audience’s preferences.
⦁ How can brands address economic challenges through PR?
Brands can build trust and maintain credibility by openly communicating challenges, providing valuable insights and showing empathy towards customers with the situations they might be facing.
⦁ What are the latest trends in PR for 2024?
Key trends include the increased use of AI, the need for personalized PR pitches, simplified brand messaging and the humanization of brands to foster authentic connections since some brands are fully AI generated together with their messages.
⦁ How do you create personalized PR pitches?
Personalized PR pitches involve researching the journalist’s interests, tailoring the pitch to align with their flow and the news outlet they work with. It is also advised to address them by their name to prove being human as a sender and to build meaningful relationships.
⦁ Why is influencer collaboration important in PR?
Collaborating with influencers can significantly amplify a brand’s reach and credibility. Influencers know their audience best and can create authentic content that they prefer and resonates with them more.
⦁ How do digital PR and traditional PR strategies differ?
Digital PR focuses on online activities like social media, content marketing and SEO, while traditional PR involves media outreach and relationship building with journalists. Both strategies should be integrated for maximum impact.
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