Welcome back to our blog series about data-driven PR campaign planning. This week, we’re concluding the series with insight into how to craft your messaging, identify the right authors and outlets, distribute strategically and proactively, and finally, measure success.
Set your messaging, write the story
Your messaging and your story are the heart of your PR campaign. Producing valuable, relevant content and releasing it at the right time and in the right place is key to building a strong connection with your audience.
Ask these questions to create your messaging:
- What’s the right angle?
- How will it break through the noise?
- Which messaging and stories worked best in the past?
To determine the right creative angle, ask yourself — why would my audiences care about this topic? What’s in it for them? The right editorial hook is often what makes someone want to learn more. At this stage, it is useful to go back to the insights about what’s currently trending in your industry, what your competitors are talking about, and what is being covered by the media.
How do you go about surfacing the current trends across the media universe? Onclusive helps communications professionals understand what is trending in the media and on social platforms. Discover the most relevant conversations and topics, what’s hot on social media, who is talking about it and where these discussions are happening.
It is also critical to understand which messaging and stories worked for you and your competitors the past. Measuring the performance of your key soundbites should be an essential part of your ongoing PR evaluation efforts. Knowing exactly which messages garnered not only the most media attention, but also the most amplification and interaction, is a key input into your story development.
Identify the right authors and outlets
Now you’re ready to think about who will tell your story. A thorough and robust media list is the foundation of any PR strategy, as media outreach in the form of pitching journalists and placing articles is one of a communications professional’s main responsibilities. Take the time to review your media database, including carefully researching and building a pitch list of key publications, authors and influencers who will be essential for your campaign.
Ask these questions to target the right authors & outlets:
- Who will be interested and why?
- Who are the most impactful ones based on past data?
- Which authors, publications, influencers that are most crucial to connect with and/or influence your audience?
- Which messages and content are you crafting for specific media and influencers to take into account the right style and format for them?
It’s important to understand which reporters and outlets can help you best reach your target audience, including the ones that drove the most impact in the past, and whether their sentiment was positive, negative or neutral. It’s also useful to find out which reporters write about your competitors but not about your brand.
Onclusive can provide just this with our PR analytics tools. Our tools help you to identify which journalists, influencers and outlets can have the biggest impact on your business — driving the most website traffic, social amplification and brand interactions. Discover who influential authors are, what they write about, how often, and in which publications so that you have an edge in your conversations with them.
Distribute strategically and proactively
The next step is campaign activation and distribution of your story to these authors and publications. At this stage, it’s important to continue to build and nurture your media network connections and make sure it’s a win-win on both sides.
You must also have a follow-up plan. Remember, your ultimate goal is to break through the noise, and sometimes it requires reaching out more than once and reiterating the newsworthy angles of your story. You can also include extra resources, such as customer reviews and testimonials, additional data and insights that only your brand can provide, exclusive photos or “sneak peaks” and other items of interest.
Also, don’t forget to include owned and social media in your distribution plan. Blogs and social media channels have become an integral part of communications strategy because they offer a way to have an active conversation with your audience. They are also excellent vehicles to control your message.
Measure success.
Don’t leave the evaluation until the end of a PR campaign. You’ll need to decide how you will measure success early on in the campaign planning process. Keep in mind that your leadership team wants to see metrics that matter to the business, such as website traffic, actions driven and ROI. How will you show that your campaign contributed to meeting your communications and organisational objectives?
AMEC’s Integrated Evaluation Framework is a helpful tool that uses the concepts outcomes and impact to prompt your thinking about each element of your PR campaign planning process, including your desired results and metrics associated with them. We have also added key metrics that we recommend tracking for every measurement bucket:
| Outputs | Out-takes | Outcomes | Impact |
| Basic measures of the volume of your activity, e.g. posts, social shares, event attendees, potential media coverage readers. | Response and reactions of your target audiences to the activity, e.g. audience attention, recall, understanding of the topic, audience engagement. | Effect of the communications on the target audience, e.g. changed attitudes, increased trust or preference, increased brand consideration. | Business impact of the communications, e.g. improved reputation, increased sales, change in policy, or improved social change. |
| What media and influencer activity has been generated by your PR campaign? | What do you want people to think differently as a result of your PR campaign? | What do you want people to feel differently as a result of your PR campaign? | What do you want people to do differently as a result of your PR campaign? |
| Example metrics Number of articles Readership Share of voice Message pull-through |
Example metrics Brand awareness Audience reach Reader engagement |
Example metrics Brand sentiment Brand consideration Brand impact |
Example metrics Website traffic Website actions Info / demo requests Sales / orders New talent hired |
Ask these questions to evaluate your PR campaign effectiveness:
- What were the results of the PR campaign?
- What has worked well against your communications objectives?
- Which activities, stories, channels, authors, publications have driven the best results?
- What did not work in the way you expected? Why?
- What should you continue to do in the future? What should you start doing? What should you stop doing?
A major PR campaign can define your brand for years to come, for better or for worse. That’s why it requires careful planning and preparation before, tracking and adjusting during, and thorough evaluation after.
Find out more about our PR analytics tools on our website.