Constructing a strategic plan for public relations campaign is primary composed of four steps:
Using research to define the problem or situation
Developing objectives and strategies that address the situation
Implementing the strategies
Measuring the results of the public relations effort.
Sometimes acronyms, such as RACE (Research, Action planning, Communication, Evaluation) or ROPE (Research Objectives, Programming, Evaluation) are used to describe the process. You will notice that the process always starts with research and ends with evaluation.
Research
Use research to analyse the situation facing the organisation and to accurately define the problem or opportunity in such a way that the public relations efforts can successfully address the cause of the issue and not just its symptoms.
The first step of the process is analysing the problem or opportunity. This involves research, either formal or informal, to gather information that best describes what is going on.
Research used to understand the situation and help formulate strategies is called formative research.
As en example a natural gas company may be considering a route for a new pipeline. It must conduct research to understand what possible obstacles it might face.
Are there any environmentally protected or sensitive regions in the area? Are there strongly organised neighborhood groups that might oppose the project? What is the overall public support for natural gas and transportation pipelines?
Community relationships professionals are very familiar with the NUMBY (Not in My Back Yard) sentiment. Additionally, are there acceptable alternatives to the pipeline construction? Alternative routes? Alternative drilling procedures? Alternative construction times?
All of these questions should be considered before the first shovel breaks ground.
In theory, research is the systematic gathering of information to describe and understand situations and check out assumptions abut publics and public relations consequences. Much of these information may already exist and may have been collected by other agencies.
Research that has previously been conducted is called secondary research. These are the last expensive way to gain background knowledge.
As an example, some associations conduct surveys on public opinion and communication practices. Such research is also available through the review of academic and professional literature.
However, you may need to perform a primary research on data you collect yourself to your purposes. You mat need to conduct interviews of focus groups with neighbourhood associations or environmental groups. You may consider surveys with homeowners and businesses.
There are many different methods to collect the data that is needed to fully understand the situation. Analysis of previous news stories would give you a good idea about the way the story might be framed by media. Another analysis of blogs and other social media would be a good idea. The purpose for gathering the information is to help with understanding the situation.
A very popular tool for analysing situations is the SWOT ( Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis. This breaks down a situation by looking at the internal and external factors that might be contributing to the situation before developing strategies.
The internal factors are Strengths and Weaknesses. The external factors are the Opportunities and Threats existing in the organisation's environment.
The first step is to look internally at the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation.
The external factors, opportunities and threats, are usually the reason the organisation finds itself in a situation.
For example an energy company may find that it has very strong relationships with members of the media, has good employee morale, and has a culture that values innovation. It might also find that it has weak relationships with environment groups and neighbourhood associations, has a culture that promotes confidence in the decisions (perhaps even bothering or ignorance), and has dedicated few resources in the past towards community relationships.
The information helps inform the possible strategies it needs to take regarding the project success.
After conducting the SWOT analysis, you can couple the internal factors with the external factors to suggest possible strategies.
SO Strategies focus on using organisational strengths to capitalise on the external opportunities.
ST Strategies also use organisational strengths to counter external threats.
WO Strategies address and improve organisational weaknesses to be better prepared to take advantage of external opportunities.
WT Strategies attempt to correct organisational weaknesses to defend against external threats.
Once enough data and information has been collected so that you really do understand the core contributing factors and not just the surface conditions, than it is time to write a two paragraph statement that summarise the situation. The first paragraph should redefine the situation using the data collected by your research. Highlight the insights and informal research.
The second paragraph should identify the problems, difficulties, and potential barriers to resolving the issue. These should also have been identified in the research, and the research also should help you recommend solutions to these barriers.
For example the gas company would address the opportunity to provide a new energy source to its customers using innovation and technology for efficient and effective delivery of the natural gas, asking its employees to be ambassadors to the community, and working with the media to tell the positive story of the project.
From the description paragraphs, a succinct one-sentence problem/opportunity statement is written that cuts to the core of situation and identifies the consequences of not dealing with the problem or opportunity.
Strategic plan
Develop a strategic plan that addresses the issue that was analysed in the first step. This includes having an overall goal, measurable objectives, clearly identifiable publics, targeted strategies, and effective tactics.
The strategic plan should be focused on resolving or capitalising on the situation identified in the problem/opportunity statement into a goal. Care should be taken not to write goals that suggests that the public will do something you want them to do. Because public cannot actually be controlled, it might set up the organisation for failure.
Instead, focus should be on what can be done to achieve that goal, such as communicate and act in such away that earns the consent or endorsement of these publics.
In the case of the energy company, the goal might be to use communication and actions that improve relationships with key members of the community in order to successfully complete the pipeline project.
Notice that there is room for change with the pipeline plans in this goal statement. The end goal is to built a pipeline, and in order to achieve this the company may need to make adjustments to the routes or constructions of the pipeline.
The goal provides the direction for the strategic plan and objectives provide the direction to specific and measurable outcomes necessary to meet the goal.
A goal should be an end and not a means to an end.
It should be measurable, it should have time frame, and it should identify the public for the intended outcome. An objective should be an outcome that contributes to the goal. There are three possible outcomes for these objectives"
Cognitive: awareness, understanding, and remembering
Attitudinal: create attitudes, reinforce positive behaviours, and change negative behaviours.
Behaviour: create behaviours, reinforce positive behaviour, and change negative behaviours.
Objectives may also hold public relations professionals accountable for their efforts. Public relations should engage only in strategies and tactics that actually contribute to larger organisational goal. Measurable objectives often require a comparative number, such as 70% awareness of a product or program. An objective cannot be set to increase awareness by 30% if the current level of awareness is unknown.
This is why formative research is needed to establish benchmarks. If no such benchmark exist, than it is customary to establish a desired level. The problem with this is that you do not know how close you are to the future before the campaign. This may be an easy objective to achieve or a very difficult one of you don't know the information.
Now, we need to look at when will the objectives be met? If there is no time frame specified, than it cannot be accountable.
It is also good to identify the overall objectives before trying them to a public. This helps to think about which publics are connected to the objectives. However, to make an objective truly measurable it must identify the public, because different publics will be at different level of awareness, attitudes and behaviours.
As an example, the objective may be to increase attendance at employee meetings. Research might find that the messages are getting clogged at middle management, which has many people who have a negative attitude about the meetings and are not encouraging the employees. One objective might focus on increasing the level of awareness of employee while creating another objective focused on increasing positive attitudes of middle management. Of course, this also means you should look into your meetings and find out how to improve them.
The objectives should advance overall business goals such as increase sales, increase share value, retain employees, improve social responsibility, or reduce litigation. They should also be written within the parameters of possible public relations outcomes.
Generally, there is a hierarchy of different levels of objectives: outputs, outtakes and outcomes.
As mentioned previously, output objectives are focused on the effectiveness of meeting strategy such as number of placed messages in the media, the size of the audience that received the message, the percentage of positive messages that were contained in the stories, and so forth.
It is helpful to measure output objectives because they provide a good indicator on how well the strategy has been implemented. However, they are not considered objectives.
An output objective may read: "Place 30 stories in newspapers about the product in the next 3 months". This is a means to en end of increasing awareness and could be measured by the output of the message but not the impact of the message.
Outtake objectives are focused on increasing awareness, understanding and retention of the key message points. It is far more important to know that the audience received the message than whether it was sent out. For example, you may send out a message in an employee newsletter that reaches 10,000 employees. You need to be more concerned on the impact that message had, than the number of people it reached.
Outcome objectives are perhaps the most important, but also the most difficult to achieve. Once the goal of the public relations and measurable objectives have been established it is time to pay attention to the strategies. Strategies provide the means by which the objectives are met. There are certain elements that should be considered in the step:
Identify what is trying to be accomplished with each public (tie the strategy to an objective).
Segment audiences based on common characteristics.
Create communication strategies that are focused on the self-interests of the public
Identify how public will be reached with messages or actions.
So often public relations programs have been primary tactical and have skipped the strategic step of creating objectives. Public relations professionals are doers and often want together to the action first.
However, too many tactics have been executed because of tradition, than because of the strategy. What makes public relations strategic is having the action tied to the real needs of the organisation.
If you come out with really clever tactics but it does not help to meet any objectives it should be seriously reconsidered. Far too many resources often are wasted on creative tactics and fall short on addressing the needs of the issue.
At the same time, brainstorming on strategies may lead to legitimate idea that was not considered during the objective phase, and it may require reevaluating the objectives. But if the strategy cannot be tied to an essential outcome, than it should not be executed.
All groups within publics should be differentiated based on common characteristics such as demographics, geographic, or psychographics. It is important to segment your key publics because it will help you identify the self-interests.
Demographics
Demographics include variables such as gender, income, level of education and ethnicity. Females may be connected to the issue very differently than males. Collage graduates may have different attitudes than high school graduates.
Geographics
Geographics describe your public by their location. People living within thousands feet of a pipeline may have different attitudes towards energy companies than those who live a mile from those lines.
Psychographics
Psychographics segment your audience based on their values and lifestyles. People who are single, adventurous, drive fast cars, and spend a lot of their income on entertainment may have very different options about seatbelts than people who have small children, drive minivans, and invest most of their money on securities.
People pay more attention to communications that are tied to their values, needs and goals. You should ask yourself what your publics value and care about.
Knowing the demographics, geographic, and psychographic differences of key publics, you can create a message that connects them to your program.
Once the self-interests have been identified, a primary message can be created that will give direction to the communication efforts. These can become slogans if they are clever and effective enough.
The last element in the strategy is identifying the channel or medium through which you can reach the target publics.
The channels can be mass media, such as newspapers or television or radio programming. They can be transmitted by other mediated channels such as e-mail, blog or Twitter. They can also be town hall meetings, mediated slide shows, and face-to-face (interpersonal) communication.
Sometimes the channel is the group of people, usually opinion leaders, such as teachers, scientists, doctors or other experts. Usually the target audience is reached through multiple points of contact to reinforce the message.
The most creative element in the strategic planning stage is tactics. Tactics are the specific communication tools and tasks that are used to execute the strategy. The challenge is to create tactics that cut through the clutter of all the messages competing for the audiences attention. A great deal of brainstorming takes place during this stage to develop the most creative and clever messages, designs and activities.
However, there is also the temptation to get carried away with the creativity and loose sight of the tactics purposes.
A cardinal rule is to always evaluate your tactics within established strategies and objectives.
Communication
Execute the plan with communication tools and tasks that contribute to reaching the objectives.
The best public relations programs include both communication and action. The old adage 'actions speak louder than the words" is a true for public relations and it is for other businesses disciplines.
Sometimes an organisation needs to act, or react, before it can communicate. Organisations should not only expect stakeholders to behave in ways that benefit the organisation, sometimes the organisation needs to change its actions and behaviours to improve these critical relationships.
As an example, if an employee does not attend training seminars it might not be enough to more creative and persuasive messages. The seminars may need to be more relevant and interesting for the employees providing something to communicate that might change behaviours.
Two additional components to the public relations process usually are developed during the communication and action stage: the planning calendar and the budget.
Once the tactics have been determined its best to plan the development and execution of the tactics using a calendar tool such as a Gantt Chart. A Gantt chart is a horizontal flow chart that provides a graphic illustration on when tasks should begin and end in comparison to all other tasks.
The costs for developing, distributing, and executing the tactics should also be determined. You may want to start with a wish list of all tactics and pare them down to those that will provide the greatest return on investment. Some tactics may fall by the wayside when you project their costs against their potential of meeting your objectives.
Evaluation
Measure whether you were successful in meeting the goals using evaluation tools.
According to Paine, four concerns should be addressed when evaluating the effectiveness of a public relations campaign:
Define the benchmark.
Select the measurement tool.
Analyse data, draw actionable conclusions, and make recommendations.
Make changes and measure again.
If you have followed the steps in the public relations process than you have already identified your audiences and established objectives for each. If your objectives are measurable than you already have the criteria by which to evaluate the success of your program/.
Benchmark
If you set the objective of increasing awareness by 30% than the benchmark has been set against which to measure. The benchmark compares your current situation to your past. Paine also recommends comparing the data gathered to other organisations, such as key competitors.
Tools
Based on the evaluation, the tools that will best help measure against stated criteria are selected. Generally, the same tools that helped establish the benchmark data are used. If primary research was used to establish benchmarks than the same methods are repeated to evaluate success.
As noted previously, primary research is the most expensive and requires the most expertise, but it is the best measure of the real impact of a public relations effort on stated outcome objectives, such as change in awareness, attitudes, and behaviour.
Probably the most popular evaluation tools used in public relations measure the output objectives.
There are several ways to measure the effectiveness of communication outputs, but some a better than others. One of the easiest methods was clip counting. You can either a hire clipping services to collect your own clips. At the end of the predominated period, the number of clips obtained is examined.
Clip counting effectiveness is the most simple and convenient way to measure output is one way to monitor media coverage. It is also the least informative because you do not know what the clips mean (they are only counted and not evaluated) except that, perhaps, it has stroked the egos of some senior management by getting their names in the media.
Many public relations measurement services will analyse media coverage to evaluate:
The percentages of articles that contain program key messages.
The prominence of the message (for a press release, whether it was printed on page 1 versus page 25, in a broadcast, how much time was allocated to the story and where it appears in the program)
The tone of the message (positive, neutral, negative)
How the media efforts compare with key competitors.
These organisations provide metrics that help establish benchmarks pertaining to program output objectives and strategies. However, to know if these communications actually affected people's awareness, understanding, attitudes, or behaviours primary research such as surveys need to be conducted.
Although sophisticated measures of communication output have been developed over the years, it is still more critical to consider the outtake and outcomes of those messages.
Getting the communication into various channels, be they traditional or new media, is only the means to the end of affecting attitudes, opinions and behaviours. The outcomes need to be measured in order to tie back to organisational goals and purposes.
Continuous evaluation
Evaluation and measurement should not take place only at the end of your efforts. You should be monitoring the media constantly to determine whether your message is available for people to see. If the media strategy is not working, course corrections in the middle of the program are required, not after the program has been completed.
Cost comparisons between public relations and advertising messages are not generally used or encouraged as an evaluation tool because of the difficulty in measuring the actual impact of these messages.
However, we do know that although public relations and advertising generate the same amount of product awareness, brand recall, and purchase intention, public relations content produces higher level of product knowledge and positive product evaluation than advertising.
Attitudes and opinions
To measure attitudes and opinions, the most popular tool remains the survey. Public opinion polls and attitude surveys can be conducted and compared to benchmark to determine whether the messages and behaviours of an organisation have had the intended effect. Intentions to behave and preferences for purchasing can also be measured through surveys, providing some figures on people's inclinations.
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