Research before writing a PR plan

Share |

OTHER ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR.

Government PR: Is it working? The event organizer's life Top 10 Public Relations Mistakes

Public Relations and Research? What do these two have or not have in common? Why should a company budget for research instead of diving straight to the point?

Research is important in almost all aspects of public relations. However, we will look at only one aspect and that is conducting research before writing a PR plan.

A PR plan can be defined as a step – by –step approach to achieving your organisation’s PR goals.

There are six key steps in writing a PR plan. The first step is to develop an overall goal that defines the purpose of your plan. The second step is to have objectives that will support and help you achieve your overall goal. The third step is to identify your publics. The fourth step is to craft the messages that you want to pass to your publics. The fifth step is to develop tactics that will help you achieve your goal and objectives. The sixth step is to create a timeline outlining when the tactics will be implemented.

Research needs to be conducted before writing these steps. A PR plan written before prior research is more or less doomed to fail.

Let’s take for example if your company’s overall goal is to create a positive image among its key publics. Research needs to be conducted to determine what the current image among the publics is. Once this is done then you can go ahead and write objectives from an informed point of view.

As you write your objectives, bear in mind that they should be specific, measurable and have a timeline. This will help you set achievable objectives and evaluating the success of your PR plan becomes much easier.

Research will also inform you on what messages need to be sent out to the public. The messages sent out should be in line with your overall goal.

Research is also important when developing your tactics. Tactics are the methods that you use to pass your messages across. This could be through the media, events, sponsorships and so on.

It is necessary to research on what tactics will best reach your publics. Let’s take an example of a company that manufacturers clothes for teenagers.

Research may reveal that teenagers use the internet more than they watch TV. Therefore, online advertising may yield more fruit than TV advertising.

It is easy to assume that you know some of these trends but it is necessary to still research because trends change and research often reveals things not known.

So next time you set out to write a PR plan, do some research first.