Strategic Public Relations Planning: 8 Key Elements

Posted on Jan 19, 2025 in Business Management and Marketing

This is the second step in the public relations process, after the investigation. Before doing anything, it has to be clear what to do and in what order to achieve the objectives of the organization. Planning prevents improvised and inefficient communication. With a plan, what will be done and how it will be performed is achieved more effectively, so public relations will be more useful for the organization.

Elements of Planning

All PR plans comprise eight key elements:

1. Situation

Unable to set valid targets without understanding the situation that has led to the conclusion that we need a PR program. There are three types of situations that demand the need to create a PR program:

  • a) The organization must undertake a particular project
  • b) The organization faces a situation that negatively affects it
  • c) The organization wants to strengthen its work to preserve its reputation

2. Objectives

The objectives are to be valued as follows:

Ask yourself:

  1. Does it really fit the situation?
  2. Is it realistic and achievable?
  3. Can its effectiveness be measured?

A goal is made in relation to the results of the program and not with the program’s needs. In other words, the objectives should not be media purposes. A bad goal is: “to generate publicity for a new product.” Publicity is not an end in itself. The goal is to make people aware that there is a new product, which can be achieved using various tactics such as press releases, etc.

There are two types:

  1. Informative: Much of the work of PR is to provide information to the public and make them aware of the organization, new products, events, etc.
  • Example: One difficulty is assessing whether objectives have been achieved, and information that is sometimes difficult to quantify abstract factors. It can be assessed through surveys or counts of messages in the media, but the exposure of a message does not mean it has increased public awareness.
  1. Motivational: These are easier to measure. They can be quantified. They are those who seek a change in attitude in that situation.
  • Example: SEDAPAL – Awareness that water is a resource that can be exhausted and that there are people who do not have this resource throughout the day; therefore, it must be used responsibly.

3. Public

PR programs should target specific audiences and be well-defined. While some campaigns can be directed to the general public, to be able to find my target audience within the whole mass, I must make market research that seeks to identify what are my key audiences (stakeholders, interest groups) according to such factors as:

  • Age
  • Educational level
  • Income
  • Property you own
  • Social class
  • Sex
  • Place of origin
  • Social status
  • Place of residence
  • Consumption patterns of certain products

Once the public organization, product, or service is identified, we have three objectives: to inform, persuade, and motivate.

4. Strategy

You can understand strategy as how to achieve, in theory, a goal, giving way forward for the overall program. It should be noted that strategies are generic statements; specific activities are the tactics.

5. Tactics

While the strategies defined major projects (what should be done), tactics define the how, the how-to make strategies work.

6. Timetable/Deadlines

Planning is needed to determine a time. Before making a calendar, three things must be clear:

  1. The decision of when to apply the campaign
  2. Determination of the appropriate sequence of activity
  3. Compilation of the list of activities to be carried out

7. Budget

No plan is complete without a budget. In most organizations today, they themselves define the amount you can spend and ask the PR area to design a plan according to the amount designated.

8. Evaluation

It is the planning element that compares the stated goals of the program with those achieved. Goals should be measurable to demonstrate to clients and employers that the program has been successful. The objectives of motivation are usually evaluated from the increase in sales, opinion surveys to measure before and after the campaign, and responses of interest groups.