Hello!
It’s Wednesday again, which means the next post in my mini-series of business and marketing tips from my PR expert friend, Rachel Burks. If you missed the previous posts in the series you can catch up by clicking the links here:
Here's Rachel with today's subject...
How to write a public
relations (PR) plan for your business
When you started your business I am sure you had a business
plan, a goal in mind, an idea of costs and set of values/ethos about how you want do things.
The reason you are reading this is no doubt because you need help working out how to drive your business forward and how to use all forms of communication to help.
What you need is a communication strategy to ensure you are
clear on what to do when. We create these plans to help our clients secure the
best in media coverage and to explore all opportunities.
A PR plan enables you to think about what you want to say
about yourself, your company, service or product. It pinpoints the audience you
wish to reach, the traditional and social media they read/listen to/watch and
what techniques you can use to target them.
We collectively have more than 60 years’ experience in
writing PR and social media plans and strategies. We only write plans for our clients, but here are
the basics for you to use to have a go at writing your own too.
What should be in
your plan?
- Objectives: What do you want to achieve? For example, increased sales, new clients/customers in a particular market or to raise awareness.
- Target audience: Try and break this down into very specific groups, for example, stay at home mums aged 30 plus.
- Key messages: Try and identify the three main things you need to say about your company or product/service. Make sure every media release includes these and remember them during interviews.
- Target media: The more specific your target audience, the easier it is to work out what media they enjoy. We have thousands of local, regional and national media contacts and we closely guard these, they take years to build up and we reserve access to them for our clients.
- Techniques: For example, media releases, media calls, giveaways and competitions, features in magazines, letters in newspapers and social media activities, the list can be fairly lengthy so try and keep focused.
- Schedule: Even if there are no particular launch dates or events, give yourself goals and deadlines as these will help you achieve more.
- Evaluate: Ask new clients/customers where/how they heard about you, check online for coverage, collect cuttings and keep a file. Check the Google Analytics for your website and have a footfall counter in your store if you are a retailer.
Best wishes
