Setting PR objectives is even more important now

By Kim Harrison,

Consultant, Author and Principal of www.cuttingedgepr.com

Most PR practitioners are familiar with the need to set objectives in communication projects.

Despite the agreed need, it is tempting not to bother in cases when an activity is repeated every year, or when senior managers direct something to be done at short notice or when the need for the project seems blindingly obvious.

However, it is best for several reasons to ensure you set objectives before embarking on an activity.

The first reason is that the whole world is undergoing a difficult economic downturn. Senior management of business and government organizations are urgently reviewing all operational budgets including public relations / corporate relations activities in order to stem losses, preserve fragile profits or meet budget expectations set at the beginning of the year.

Suddenly PR activities are being scrutinized more heavily than ever before. We need to justify our programs, or at least justify budgets to people who may not understand PR and who are looking to make deep cuts. Staffing cuts are a possibility – and that could mean you.

In this time of belt tightening, we need to demonstrate that PR is effectively supporting the achievement of organizational goals and ideally is doing a better job at it than alternative communication options such as advertising and promotions. In fact, during tough times, many organizations come to realize that PR offers better return on investment than other options.

The best way to demonstrate the value of PR is to create communication objectives that directly support organizational goals and objectives. This may seem to be a non-issue because practitioners are supposed to set objectives for significant communication activities as a matter of course. But all too often, PR people fail to plan and document the objectives for activities that demonstrably support organizational priorities.

The penalty for this is found in research findings. Research shows organizations that don’t set PR goals and objectives to evaluate performance experience the greatest downsizing in corporate communication staff and budgets.

It is easy to set individual project and program objectives, but more complex to show that the activity links PR objectives to business objectives.

The act of setting the objectives helps you get your mind around the key points of a project. Going to the effort of producing specific, measurable objectives will spell out how the program or project will be implemented to reach the desired outcome.

Although it may seem obvious that the organizational goals and objectives need to be directly supported by communication programs, PR practitioners quite often forget to emphasize the link when they seek to explain and justify their activities.

Linking PR effectiveness to the organization’s corporate plans is not easy. It requires careful thinking on what the communication program seeks to accomplish to help the organization achieve its goals.

In setting communication objectives, it is usually important to recognize that measuring overall impact of a communication program or strategy can be difficult unless the individual elements or components of the program are clearly defined and measured, especially the response of key stakeholder groups.

When planning communication activities, you can increase your value to the organization by asking some key questions to yourself that can help your organization achieve its highest-priority goals with your astute communication support:

1. What are the stated goals of each operational area of your organization, as well as the stated corporate priorities evidenced by the latest strategic plan for each operational area and the corporate area? If you are unsure what they are or can’t get access to them, ask the manager from each area – they will invariably be impressed that you are going to the effort of finding out the information directly from them – either from their documents or from interviewing them.

2. Who are the key stakeholder groups for each of the most important operational and corporate activities outlined in the above plans? Be sure to define and segment those groups as tightly as possible. Prioritize them by their importance to the respective operational area, eg by their financial power, influence with decision-makers, voting power, media contacts, productivity etc.

3. What is the range of possible responses from those stakeholder groups to the plans outlined in point 1 above?

4. What is the ideal stakeholder (segment) response that your organization is trying to achieve in each case?

5. What communication activities can help you reach those key stakeholders in the most effective way, ie a way that will persuade the stakeholders to respond in the way that would best suit your organization (and ideally suit the stakeholders as well) in each case? Detail the most targeted ways you can reach each segment so the messages are personalized as much as possible. Decide what combination of communication channels might be the most cost effective.

6. Can you put a persuasive case to management outlining the effective ways that communication will help your organization to attain the goals and objectives developed above?

7. What about other communication disciplines? Can PR be more effective than marketing, advertising, promotions etc? For instance, frequently PR people can manage sponsorships more effectively than other disciplines can.

By setting PR objectives in this way, you will form the basis for effective programs that support the organizational goals and objectives. This applies to consulting work as well as corporate activities.

Having set measurable objectives, you need to ensure management or client sign-off to them. Get senior management or the executive committee to endorse your objectives and the way they support organizational objectives. Then evaluate the results at the completion of the activity. If senior management ever query the value of your activities, you can show proof that you achieved the objectives, which they endorsed, through the evaluation reports for the activities. Invariably, PR activities show a very healthy return on investment. Thus this makes it very difficult for them to question your PR achievements in tough times, whether you are in-house or a consultant.

There are other ways to develop effective communication planning techniques that will be discussed in future articles.

About the Author

Kim Harrison is a recognized authority in the public relations field. His website, www.cuttingedgepr.com, provides a wealth of informative articles and resources on public relations techniques and management.

 

Click here to go to the Free Articles Index