UPDATE: The summer is officially over and fall is in the air!  Pretty soon, winter will be here!  This is a favorite season for a lot of reasons.  The days start to get shorter, and the evening air cools down just right to enjoy a firepit on the patio with friends and family. It’s now time to plan for your future!

This time of year is also a good time for corporations and nonprofit organizations to establish their plans for the upcoming year of marketing and PR strategies.  There is more to planning than simply determining a budget.  A PR plan includes tools and activities specially designed to get your brand in front of your target audience and keep it there throughout the year.  Whether your organization is planning its very first PR strategy or your marketing team has made this a regular fall priority, there are three important steps to developing a great PR plan for the year ahead.

Assess and Brainstorm

Measuring marketing and PR activities is an end of year assessment of overall results.  It is the most important step in your plan.  Review the year that is currently winding down.  Has your media coverage achieved its objectives this year?  How well did your pitches work for each campaign undertaken?  Answers to these questions, down to the fine details, will help determine if next year’s goals will include similar campaigns and what kinds of revisions will make them even better. Don’t fail to review areas where your company deployed crisis communications.  Were these communications efforts effective? Given what you have learned in tough media situations, is there something your plan could include to better prepare for or deter, negative media going forward?

Visit Goals and Objectives

“I love it when a plan comes together!” is the famous quote from the hit TV show The A-Team which says it all! The truest test of a great plan is knowing what your goals are and how you intended to reach those goals. While Hannibal Smith, of A-Team, didn’t always have the steps of his plan worked out, there was always a clear goal and objectives to get them the desired end result.

After reviewing achievements for the current year, now it’s time to determine if those goals make sense for the upcoming year. Were they lofty enough to be attainable yet challenging? If your company fell woefully short of its marketing and PR goals and is well into the fourth quarter of the year, it is wise to reevaluate them for the coming year. Revisit the steps laid out a year ago. It is possible that the goals were just right but some of the objectives were not met causing the whole plan to derail.

Replenish your Toolbox

At Chemistry PR and Multimedia, we believe a great PR plan includes the right tools to make it happen.  Goals set, objectives reviewed and revised, it’s time to pull out the tools needed to do the job right.  Here are just a few essentials to include in your toolbox.

Calendar. Seasonal planning and planning around important events related to your industry are key to great PR timing.  Also essential is scheduling and planning media pitching and ad campaigns for the best possible coverage. Pegging a great story can be spontaneous and there must be allowances for huge opportunities that can and do, arise. But for the most part, your PR calendar should be full of tactics, pitches, and other events.

Media Contacts.  Refresh and revise media contacts for the most effective pitching activities. Your professional PR agency is very aware of the irritation experienced when trying to reach outdated media contacts and get, at best, the runaround, or at worst, their pitches go unseen. The best firms are consistently in touch with established media contacts and are great at keeping up with current contacts and establishing new ones.

Publications.  Great media exposure can be obtained through industry-specific publications and business publications. Businesses of all sizes and structures alike can experience huge return on invested time and dollars when they step beyond simply placing a paid advertisement in these publications. Your business has a story to share, and a well planned and executed pitch will ensure that the story is picked up.  A well-planned strategy for this exposure includes thorough research of the publications and the important contacts, submission deadlines, and closing calendars. Making contact should start months before the story’s planned release giving your PR firm great opportunities for pegging seasonal and industry-specific stories and ensuring stories get to the right publications at the right time.

The three steps to developing a great PR plan highlighted here are essential to meeting your PR goals yet are flexible enough to allow for adjustments during the plan year. You don’t have to wait until the end of the year to determine if your PR plan is working.

Are you ready to start your 2018 PR plan? Chemistry PR and Multimedia, your full-service agency, has a proven track record in planning and executing PR strategies for businesses large and small, and non-profit organizations nationally.  We are here for you. Call us at 314-603-2866!