Critical Components of a Public Relations Plan
Developing a public relations plan involves strategic thinking and following a systematic planning process. Depending on the pro, it can be a specialty or something you only do when the time/mood/day/campaign is right. Luckily, I learned how to plan early on in my career and have fine-tuned that process with experience and studying. Following a thoughtful plan has led us to reach campaign goals, improve our work, and win awards. That’s awesome! Before any of that though, a plan can keep pros from running in circles among too many ideas, opinions and assumptions.
How can you get where you want to go without knowing where you are headed?
Understanding the Components
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the nation’s leading professional organization for PR professionals, recommends professionals use a 10-step process to write a plan. These 10 steps offer a framework to assess and cover most bases for just about any public relations situation.
Pro Truth: PR professionals don’t always include all 10 steps in a plan.
Why? Working and writing through all 10 steps can seem excessive for some campaigns or overwhelming for some clients. In the spirit of getting to what really matters, let’s break down some critical but confusing parts of a PR plan.
Goals: Longer-term, broad, future statements of “being” AKA the overall outcome(s) of a campaign
Objectives: These are shorter-term, (SMART) specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time-based program effects that change opinion, attitude or behavior
If you reach your objectives, you will reach the goal. Write these after you complete your initial research.
Strategies: Approach, road map or general plan to reach the objectives
Tactics: Specific tools/vehicles for accomplishing a strategy
Most practitioners think about tactics first. Ex. “Let’s have an event! Let’s create an ad!”
Below is an infographic showing how they relate. In this illustration, it’s easy to see how tactics are like the steps of a strategy ladder. Using tactics that are part of a smart strategy can help you reach your objectives. Each objective, like these buildings, must be cleared (or hit). With each objective you overcome, you get closer to reaching the ultimate goal. For this superhero, it’s about reaching that jewel. See how our superhero makes it to her goal with the help of each of these essential parts?
Understanding how each of these plan components intersect, rely on each other and have their own role will help you build stronger, more measurable plans. Plus, you’ll be on better footing for studying for your APR! I recently studied for and passed (hallelujah) my Accreditation in Public Relations test. There are only about 5,000 APR pros in the field. Why? That process and test is tough! A big portion of the test, in fact the largest percentage of questions on it, covers Researching, Planning, Implementing and Evaluating Programs. Understanding the difference between goals, objectives, strategies and tactics as well as understanding how they work together is key part of passing that section.
Let me know if this breakdown helped you!