A PR campaign must always have a clear objective. You want it to have a long-lasting impact on your company’s public image. We all know that reputation is everything. That is why an effective PR campaign must be well-planned. Here are onefoursix’s top tips on what a successful PR campaign should look like.

#1 Know your outcome

Before you do anything, you need to have a clear idea on what your objectives are. Taking the time to plan these out is important because it will help the campaign to stay consistent and on-message in everything you do. Additionally, it will also allow you to monitor how effective your strategy is as the campaign progresses.

A PR campaign can be effective for several things. Whether you want to increase your audience reach, improve your brand’s reputation or boost sales, a PR campaign can achieve this. We recommend listing your aims and setting yourself measurable targets. For example, increase sales by 15%.

Knowing what you want to achieve from your campaign is an important consideration as it will also help to build a realistic timeframe as it progresses.

When coming up with your objectives, we recommend structuring then using SMART objectives. If you follow these questions as a guide, you will find it beneficial when constructing your campaign strategy.

• Specific – what do you want to achieve?
• Measurable – how will you measure the success?
• Achievable – how will you achieve it within your budget?
• Realistic – is your campaign realistically achievable with your resources?
• Timed – what is your timeframe?

#2 Focus on your audience

At this stage, you will want to create audience profiles to help you understand their wants and needs. This will help to target them much more effectively, and also help you decide which publications to engage with. From then on, everything you do during your campaign should be focussed on addressing the audience’s wants and needs.

Despite wanting journalists and publication companies to buy into your business, your main campaign message should be targeting potential customers. It is important to keep this at the forefront of your communications.

#3 Create a strategy

At the heart of any good campaign is a strong strategy. It needs to incorporate all aspects of the business. The strategy will help your company image to appear consistent when interacting with customers. Whether this is through social platforms, your website or securing press coverage. We advise creating a timeline for press releases and social media posts. This allocates a certain amount of time to respond to any questions and engagement from social media.

A great way to gain coverage is by planning your strategy schedule ahead of upcoming events that are relevant. This gives you the opportunity to prepare a reaction, ready to send out to media companies as soon as the announcement is made. This allows your response to be immediate which is very valuable for journalists. Our top tip is to prepare multiple press releases for different possibilities for future events. This means you can then post out the most relevant as soon as an announcement is made. This will guarantee your response is the first out there.

#4 Produce targeted press releases

You want your press releases to be carefully constructed in order to be noticed by the media. You want to also ensure they are distributed to the right people. The best press release don’t just advertise your business. They need to have a strong news angle, such as including relevant quotes and all the information a journalist would need to write a story.

When written, distribute them to a media list that is relevant to your market. Don’t be afraid to include radio stations and TV channels. It may also be useful to make it clear that you are available for interview.

#5 Implement backlinks

Almost 80% of the traffic on a website originates from search engines. Therefore, implementing an SEO strategy will help boost your audience reach ensuring a long-term success. Once your story starts spreading throughout the media, you want to be sure to take advantage of the traction you’re getting. Generating high-quality backlinks is one of the most important techniques to use. We recommend generating backlinks from high authority sites to drive relevant traffic to your own site. This is an asset that you should also build up over time.

#6 Use your personal brand

You want your PR campaign to be unique and stand out in your industry. The one thing you can guarantee is unique about your company is YOU. Get creative and be sure to stand out from your competitors. By creating and promoting your personal brand alongside your business, you can generate a multi-dimensional campaign. You create a more authentic public image, as well as making yourself known in your relevant sector.

#7 Follow ups

Once your story has been picked up by the media, it is important to follow-up to ensure you’re getting the best engagement from it. To do this, you can reach out to the media outlets you’ve featured in and ask that they post the story to their social media platforms. This can feel slightly awkward to ask, but it can be beneficial. Link building is another way to ensure more people see your news. It allows people to learn more about your brand and improve your website domain authority. Follow ups will ensure your PR campaign is well known and will grow the public image of your company significantly.

#8 Assessing Results

You need to constantly assess the results of your PR campaign. If something isn’t working, you need to be able to identify what it is and not waste anymore time on it. On the other hand, you can also identify what’s doing well and repeat this in the future.

You can assess the results of the campaign by referring to your strategy. You can monitor your aims and targets to understand if you’re on track or not. We recommend producing a monthly review to keep on top of this.

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PR is a fantastic and cost effective method to engage with customers. It ensures your audience understand what you do and builds up a big hype around your company. It can change perception and raise awareness of a success. Now you are ready to get the conversation started.

Here at onefoursix, we offer PR services to help you get your business noticed and get the media talking. Get in touch today on 01604 419776.