Marketing Skills: Public Relations (PR): Successful PR planning

Course Overview

Effective and efficient public relations requires planning and a sustained effort to guarantee results. You need to establish and maintain the reputation of your organisation or client and it is the planning that will make all the difference to your success. Creativity without planning is a wasted effort. But do you have the tools you need to plan an inspiring and successful public relations campaign?

If you are new to the industry or have recently moved into a role that demands much more of a PR focus, you may be unsure of how to approach your campaign or PR functions in general. It is important that you understand the brief and take the time to systematically go through all the elements. From the exciting and creative to the mundane financial considerations. If you want guidance on all aspects of planning brilliant PR, then this workshop is for you.

In an engaging one-day workshop, we give you a range of methods and techniques for approaching PR and enable you to understand the significance of the planning process and tools for evaluating performance and measuring success. By approaching your campaigns confidently and efficiently you will gain more from your PR activities and reap benefits not only for your organisation but for yourself.

Audience

This workshop is aimed at anyone new to the PR or marketing industry, from agencies and in-house departments alike, who needs to learn essential planning and evaluating techniques and gain an insight into what factors are key to success. It is also vital for those who are not in the PR industry but have, or will shortly have, responsibility for PR and press office type functions within their organisation.

Skills Gained

This hands-on interactive programme will give you:

• A proper understanding of the way planning fits into wider PR responsibilities
• Practical guidance on how to conduct a PR audit
• An experienced PR professional's tips on setting realistic PR objectives
• Top ten tried and tested tactics to get you to your objectives
• A proven framework for continuous measurement of the plan
• Evaluation techniques that will enable meaningful assessment and provide the basis for future work
• The chance to benchmark your existing planning skills with those of a leading practitioner

Course Outline

Background to PR planning

• Planning as a discipline
• Project planning v ongoing reputation management
• How planning has evolved
• The initial brief
• The skills and qualities of successful PR planning
• Industry views - CpIPR/PRCA

The five essential steps in PR planning

• Audit
• SMART PR objectives
• The strategy and the plan
• Continuous measurement
• Results and evaluation

Step 1 - Audit

• How to do it
• PEST and SWOT analyses
• Researching your sector
• Competitor activity
• Media research
• Working with research companies
• Writing research briefs
• Ways to get to grips with desk research - The subject - who does what
• Contacts and sources of information

Step 2 - SMART PR objectives

• Why objectives cause problems
• Expectation management and internal audiences
• Corporate objectives v PR objectives
• Audience and stakeholder identification and segmentation
• Key messages
• What do you want targets/stakeholders to know, understand, believe and do
• Setting the timescale

Step 3 - Strategy and plan

• What is strategy?
• Writing a PR strategy and plan
• Selecting tactics that will help meet your objectives
• Optimum tactics for PR plans
• Top ten tried and tested tactics

Step 4 - Continuous measurement

• How to do it
• Media tracking
• Reviewing objectives
• Using media evaluation companies
• Staying on track
• Intervals and reporting methods
• Modifying the strategy and plan as you go

Step 5 - Evaluation

• Projects v ongoing reputation management
• What worked and what didn't
• Presenting findings internally
• Findings as the key component in future audits

Learning from others

• Looking at case histories
• Tackling a brief (team exercise)
• Taking learning back to your own company

Marketing Skills: Public Relations (PR): Successful PR planning / MA-PR