Measuring Public Relations: The Plan

The Plan. It is the map for your trip.

1. Plan your plan.
2. Write your plan.
3. Approve your plan.
4. Work your plan.
5. Measure your plan.

The "unspoken rule" is to get everyone to stick to the plan, but always keep in mind that is a work in progress and not a "critical path." There is always room for adjusting, ramping up or down, and when facing a round-about, allowing enough flexibility in the plan to try another road that may ultimately end up being a much grander adventure.

Public relations measurement enables an organization, business, government, marketing firm or public relations agency to determine the direct relationship between proactive publicity efforts and the output of those efforts to their "key publics".

For the purpose for this series of articles, it will relate to the media as the key public. (other key publics include employees, investors, board of directors, elected officials, vendors, existing customers, new customers, community leaders,

There are many ways to measure the effectiveness of public relations and they all vary depending on goals and can be as diverse as the differences of hundreds of different services and businesses.

There are five parts to a public relations plan. Below is an example using a "made-up" and very simple example of a plan.

1. Objective. The main thing or purpose. Keep it short and to one sentence if possible. It is the "overarching mission statement" for the plan.

Use our annual special event to solidify our business as a charitable community partner, helps our employees see us a fun place to work and our customers and vendors excited about doing business with us.

2. Strategies. Think of them as painting the broad brush strokes of the picture which always goes back to your meeting your objective.

• Work with a well-known local charity that needs funding.
• Have a local celebrity serve as our spokesperson on behalf of the charity.
• Include current vendors as sponsors.
• Involve employees in the event.
• Reach our customers.
• Get news coverage.

3. Goals. Measurable and specific. Also...be reasonable. Everyone wants national coverage, but is there a national news angle to your event?

• Get confirmation from the local celebrity by January 2o.
• By February 3, identify the charity.
• Raise $3,000 for the charity by using our annual event.
• Host the first task force meeting on January 2.
• Engage the employee participation by 10% over last year's event.
• Secure one major and two minor vendor sponsorships to pay for entertainment.
• Obtain pre-event media coverage to increase company web page traffic by 1,000 new users per week for six weeks.
• Book six media outlets to attend the event as working media.
• Increase business by 3% over same time last year.

4. Tactics. These are what helps you reach goals, they support the strategies and all of them must meet the objective. ANY tactic that does not implicitly focus on the ultimate objective, does not support strategies and cannot be used toward reaching a measurable goal, in most cases does not need to be a tactic in your plan!

• Host a news conference at the (mall, park, downtown, college...place where there will already be lots of people there) with the charity and local celebrity to announce the annual event and explain the details.
• Write and distribute a media alert about the news conference.
• To get a head start on raising money, get the local celebrity to sell and sign their new book and take photos at a certain location (ball game, concert, mall) and get them to donate half the proceeds to the charity.
• Write and distribute news release about $$$ raised by book signing.
• Pitch story ideas for the event.
• Do a media blitz to media outlets with the celebrity and company CEO. Book them for morning radio and noon talk shows.
• Work with celebrity's public relations manager to promote event on the celebrity's web site, communicate event in fan mail, and see if celebrity will mention event at media opportunities, including national book tour leading up to the event.
• Write and distribute media alert about the event a week before and day before the event.
• Do media calls the day before and day of the event.
• Determine needs and secure (food, beverages, tickets, signage, seating, lighting, AV, etc.)
• Monitor media.
• And so on and so forth...all of the things that need to be done to support the event from catering, music, permits, volunteers, pitching media, securing photographer, event post-mortem and so on.

5. Measurement. This proves your success! Go back and see if you met or exceeded your goals? Keep in mind that there can be short-term and longer-term measurements resulting from the event may continue long after the initial event.

• Confirmed local celebrity, hosted task force meetings and identified charity by goal dates.
• Raised $5,500 for the local charity.
• Increased employee participation at the event by 15% over their participation last year.
• Distributed employee survey six months before event as a benchmark. Two weeks after the event the company did a second employee survey. Employee satisfaction is up 15% over benchmark survey. There are no other measurables for the increase (such as raises, incentives, training or programs). Though not specifically attributed to increased employee involvement and the success of event, one consider that the event played some role in raising employee satisfaction. HR will add a question for next survey to determine influence up or down for employee satisfaction.
• Secured one major and eight minor vendor sponsorships which paid to book a very popular band for the event.
• The band provided a signed guitar for us to give away on our web site. Social media, news releases and client email campaign helped double the web site traffic goal.
• Increased business by 20% during the month of the event over last year, and business has remained at 2.9% over last year, even though there was a huge drop in the stock market two months after the event.

Applause. Applause. Applause.

Now, get started on a real plan! If you don't have a plan or need help writing one, you know who to contact !