What are the most important steps to take when launching a public relations campaign?

Before even starting to design a PR campaign, the PR practitioner needs to know what the business objective is. Once you know that, then defining the communication objectives is simple. After that comes the mapping of audiences and, finally, tactics. Without knowing what the end objective PR will end up operating in a silo within the marketing department. It is critical for all arms of Marketing to work together to ensure that we achieve the business objective.

Get clear with the client on not just the PR objectives, but the overall objectives of the company or client to ensure alignment. I also like to ask "what would success look like for you from a PR standpoint" - because we may think of success in a different way from the client. Having this type of conversation ensures that we are all on the same page, and that we are the best-fit agency for the cleint. We can all get clarity about the way forward.

Always start with the end in mind. This means you need to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish first, and then work backwards from there. This is critical because the path to one goal could be drastically different than the path to a different goal, so it's important to get this part right so you don't waste time, energy, or money in your public relations campaigns.

What a big question! Before beginning any campaign, it's critical to break out your stakeholder groups and define what you want them to think, feel and do as a result of your work. From there, it becomes easier to nuance your tactics to the ultimate objectives. For example, if it's a milestone event, what you want employees to think/feel/do is different than what you'd want from an external stakeholder. It changes again for investors. Or journalists. And so on. So while the big overarching objective is important, knowing how you want to get there via this framework is also very helpful before getting going.

Make sure to know your audience but also your circle, your network and their strengths. Make a list of the connections you’ve built and nurtured, and see where their vision is geared to. Look at your audience needs then and find the overlapping area of insight and ideas beween both, for your new journey. This will define with greater clarity your target audience.

Knowing your audience starts way before the campaign. You must have key contacts in the media. You have heard the old adage "It is who you know." Well let me expand on that, it is who you get to know. Create a plan to forge relationships with media in your space. Get to know writers, bloggers, editors and bookers. Then when you have a release or scoop, you have someplace to start.

One thing that frustrates journalists is having to sift through irrelevant press releases that aren't right for their publication or media's audience. Make sure you target the right journalists with the right message by doing your research first. A lot of journalists have Twitter/ X accounts where they sometimes share their articles/ topics they write about, so that can be a good place to start.

In my experience,Understanding who the campaign is targeting is critical. In a campaign created for a healthcare app, we segmented our audience into healthcare professionals and patients. By conducting surveys and focus groups, we gained insights into their media consumption habits, which informed our choice of channels and messaging.

When launching a PR campaign make sure you have the end goal in mind. Is it to generate sales? Increase membership? Build website traffic? Change perceptions? PR has specific strengths. Tap into these strengths when you plan your PR campaign.

in my expereince ,Strategy is the overarching plan, while tactics are the actions taken to achieve the strategy. For a restaurant’s grand opening, our strategy was to create buzz in the local community. Tactically, we did this through a VIP tasting event for local influencers and a press release distributed to local and regional news outlets.

First thing first clearly outline the goals and objectives of your PR campaign. What do you want to achieve. Understand and define who you want to reach. Develop key messages and choose communication channels. Media relations is key, influencers and media houses to help spread your message. Prepare your media contact person/spokes person. Plan a launch event or announcement to kick start the campaign. Media monitoring-monitor media coverage and social media mentions. After the campaign concludes, conduct a thorough evaluation. Have a successful PR Campaign

Your strategy is the software while your tactics are the hardware, just like a computer. The keyboard, screen and unit box are useless without a software. In other to obtain your overall goal, your strategy is the locomotive of PR campaign while the ways and means put in place will allow you to achieve them (tactics). If the campaign objective is to raise funds for a project, the strategy will be that your are trusted, and the most reliable organization that can implement and you have the capability to manage the funds. While the tactics for this strategy will consist of producing reports, projecting photos and videos of previous actions of the organization. Send media coverages of your actions.

As part of your strategy, be prepared to pay to reach your target audience. In my experience, the field is too crowded to count on organic methods to achieve critical mass. Let’s face it, standing out organically is increasingly challenging. Also, a benefit to paid reach is it’s fast, targetable and measurable. Earned media and organic content are still valuable. Adding paid media allows the campaign to stay visible and relevant in the event purely organic methods fall short.

I've learned to question: What's in our toolbox to create impact? This is where the tactics come into play. The big ideas that set your campaign apart.

in my experience,Timelines keep the campaign on track and budgets ensure resources are allocated effectively. Once, for a charity event, we mapped out a four-month timeline for all activities leading up to the day and tracked spending against a tight budget, allowing for adjustments when necessary to maximize impact.

The importance of creating a realistic timeline and budget lies in effective resource management. It ensures accountability with clear milestones, deadlines, and responsibilities. A well-planned budget helps track costs, revenues, and potential risks, facilitating informed decision-making throughout the PR campaign.

Staying on track is very important, impacting how the campaign will create a dent in the news cycle. Creating a work tracker to ensure deliverables are captured and the budget for the campaign is moving in tandem.

Time is a valuable resource, and so creating a timeline at the start of the project that appropriately matches the given budget is critical. I'd encourage all project managers and client stakeholders to ensure they have the same understanding of the relationship between the timeline and budget before diving into the campaign.

We all can and have planned for every scenario we thought possible, and still something we didn't expect comes up. After executing a campaign, the monitoring and adjusting is important. Audiences may need to change, messages may need to be updated, but the key is to keep moving forward and making sure objectives are met.

Measure Results: Track key metrics and indicators to evaluate the success of your PR campaign. This could include media mentions, website traffic, social media engagement, brand sentiment, or sales figures. You can use this data to assess the effectiveness of your efforts and inform future PR initiatives. Evaluate and Learn: After the campaign concludes, thoroughly evaluate what worked well and what could be improved. Identify lessons learned and apply them to future PR campaigns to continuously refine and optimize your approach.

Remember that you set some goals and objectives at the start of the campaign? Now is the time to check if you were able to achieve them. Track the success of your PR campaign, measure key performance indicators (KPIs) such as impressions, media coverage, social media engagement, website traffic, and brand sentiment.

After launching a campaign it's imperative to continue monitoring and audience listening to fill in any gaps that may have been missed in the planning stages. Even the most well-thought-out strategies have holes that only effective media monitoring and collaboration with social media engagement, digital conversions and other metrics can reveal. Digging into reporting to see what types of coverage the campaign earned and which targets were missed should lead to follow-up, tailored pitches to try and secure additional coverage and continue to strengthen media relationships.

Having worked in both journalism and PR I would add, don't over-promise to journalists. Make sure your storytellers are lined up, available, right for the media outlet's market and ready to talk. Ensure your data is robust. Don't overcomplicate the messaging. What's the headline? Is the campaign win achievable? Tick all these and you should be in good shape.

So many organizations say they make data-driven decisions but they don’t know how to gather or analyze data. Start small and expand with additional tools over time. In grad school, stats was a requirement and a B was a fail so I got to know social science data analysis, or else! Now I use this knowledge daily for clients.

Set expectations with your internal team. Stories can take a while to develop. Maybe you give the reporter an idea that complements a broader trend they are thinking about and they need to talk to other experts before they write their story. Or maybe they want to try the product themselves and need time to test it.

One of the most overlooked parts of a launch is follow up and the post-campaign fall out. Which is typically, residual media attention or coverage you can be getting. Timeliness is not the same for everyone. We have gotten media coverage that appeared 6 months after our initial campaign, but it was so impactful that it definitely turned heads. Remember that everyone will not follow your timeline, but if you are persistent with your follow up, you may get a nice surprise that will extend the life of your campaign.

Research. Research. Research. Ideally some budget is allocated for some initial research which could include: media monitoring, social listening, polling and so on. Starting with a solid foundation of where you are will help make it clear which tactics will be the most effective to achieve the PR goals.