How do you align PR goals with your company's strategy?

Increasingly, the Communications function has opportunities to lead the corporate strategy. This shouldn't be all that surprising given that comms professionals are quite often the closest part of the organisation to all it's different stakeholder groups: employees, product development teams, customers, regulators and investors. This perspective is unique in the organisation in that it has access to real-world insight others lack.

From a public relations perspective the key is to understand the outcomes and the obstacles to achieving them. Public relations, strategically, is about building the relationships needed to overcome the obstacles to achieving an organizations goals.

Communication is a major part of a company's strategic plan, and it should be considered from the beginning of a company's establishment and throughout its operation. Without a communication component, a company's strategy, mission, goals, and action plans are incomplete.

PR, whether internal or external focused, should be inherently embedded into the organization's strategy. The PR dept should see itself in the overall strategy and understand where it can and should have a major impact. If it can't, then PR wasn't at the table when the strategy was developed. If it isn't embedded, the strategy will fail to resonate with audiences. PR should be a pillar in every company's overall strategy.

First, the PR leader needs to understand the company's strategic goals in detail. When carrying out the strategy, they must plan and figure out which steps will lead to which results and how well the PR work will support these goals. One key job of the PR team is to watch and measure how people react to these steps during the strategy’s implementation. Sometimes, trying to reach a strategic goal and the actions taken to get there might receive a negative reaction from the public, customers, or users.

I'm not altogether certain that increasing awareness and intent/interest are good comms goals. They seem like marketing goals to me. Better examples of comms goal are: "Improve our investors' perception of executive management by 10 percent over six months" or "make it so that customers trust our products more a year from now than they do today." You can loosely quantify the value of trust by, for example, looking at how previous missteps by a competitor impacted their stock price or market share. Monitoring stakeholders' perceptions, which is crucial for setting a baseline for both of these goals, should be done anyway.

Although PR should help a company towards its goals, it's often the case that we as pr professionals need to push back on too much corporate strategy, mission and vision creeping into the output. That is a massive red flag for media. So a key part of our role is how to transform the client's objectives into a pr output or tactic that works for the channel, especially in the case of earned media. Don't spend ages crafting content that looks like it fits into an annual report. Better to be reading what the media are putting out and identifying opportunities to pitch your client into the narrative of the day.

Our PR strategy is not using a publicist. Until we can find one with a decent price and connections at REAL publications with millions of followers that can break our story, then it’s useless. Why spend $1200-$3000 on then when it better serves us in GoogleAds and FB/IG ads where we can see streams and views and move the needle?

I think we often forge the "M" in SMART goals. Communications goals need to be measurable. I have heard too many seasoned practitioners say, "you just can't measure this stuff". If there is not an existing measurement tool - create it and measure against it. Until we as an industry show how communications initiatives are contributing to corporate goals, we don't deserve a seat at the strategic table!

Recommend the first step of Design Thinking for high-fidelity Comms-PR plans - Begin with the End: Identify, Segment and Empathize with your target audience for resonance - Align: Match business objectives, tactics and intended ROI to your audience for plans with less friction and clear landing strategies. - Pivot and Customize: Listen to your audience, either directly or through expert perspectives to avoid perceived audience pov. Stay agile to pivot accordingly and customise at every stage of the plan!

Something interesting to consider is to align internal departments before going to the market. Marketing, Product and Sales should be aligned with PR to boost the key messages and avoid confussion. Testing the reactions with media monitoring tools and collect feedback from the target to improve future developments.

There is no purpose in activating your PR team without knowing who your key audiences and what your key messages are. Identifying these two things should be your first and top priority.

When you're identifying and developing your messaging for the PR portion of your strategy (and every good strategy should have one), make sure to consider your internal stakeholders as well- and not just your "executive" team. Many company's miss the fact that their employees are a key audience in delivering an effective and authentic message. If your employee base doesn't understand, believe in, or support your "strategy" you might as well not have one- especially if they're doing a piece of the work. Your external audience/customer base is also extremely important to your overall success, but it's like making a pie without the crust- it's just jam.

Very happy to see this point made here. Earned media coverage is a tactic, not the goal. I say this to clients pretty frequently.

Ensure that your are optimizing your channels! Sometimes, social media is a great channels for certain PR activities; other times, it absolutely is not. Identify whether it would be most efficient to use an owned or earned media strategy, direct mailing, direct comms (email, newletter), or even executive visibility activities.

Your PR tactics and the channels you utilize to deliver your messages should be in support of whatever your defined goals and strategy is. Remember that PR tactics are a tool, they aren't the goal/end result. (Press releases, social media content, content and delivery methods). They should be evaluated and tailored to align with what your message is and who the audience is. Not every tactic will work for every group. A press release done incorrectly, to the wrong media groups, ill formatted, and unclear won't get you anywhere. A social media campaign with a content creator whose audience doesn't even align with your IPC is a failure. Be ready to tailor your approach, network, and research research research!

Be sure to have your goals, expected outcomes align with the strategy. Oftentimes the goal for brands is to go viral but their strategy solely focuses on earned media. Earned media won’t guarantee you to go viral.

One thing I've found helpful is platforms that assist with analyzing certain quantitative metrics. The integration and reporting features on many of these platforms or apps today as a business is so far advanced today from where we were 10 years ago- no one should be making PR or campaign decisions without evaluating the data they have within reach. Customer base, engagement, reach, views, impressions, clicks, etc. But that's only a piece of the puzzle. You still need to take the time to evaluate how these metrics relate to your goals and strategy as a company (and they do in every industry- its just about understanding yours). Whether its brand awareness, trust, sales, or customer feedback/online sentiment- there is an ROI for each.

I have often seen two extreme camps: Execs who want PR for everything and constant or execs that feel PR is not worth the investment as they cannot “control” the message or outcome. Really the goal is to work with the media on the right story for their audience: technology-based for tech press, business relevant for financial and daily, site relevant for local press. Understand these needs, see if what you have is relevant and pitch based on that. The goal is a relevant story for the readers- hopefully your customers or constituents. PR is an important tactic, one of many in an integrated campaign. It must be complimented with other tactics to be effective.

The key thing is to understand the company strategy, and then look at how PR leans into that - sometimes stories can come from many different angles through the media - and no company can control the news agenda. That then means the PR strategy needs to be created with a degree of flex. Also take stats and measurements with a pinch of salt when it comes to media reach. Some PR tactics are very measurable, some are not however with media outreach it's coverage that counts & where possible positive coverage. Also don't be afraid of having an advertorial strategy to achieve goals. Often PR companies bleat on about 'earned coverage' - journalists don't care a jot for that. They want the right people with the right expertise at the right time.

The strategy needs to come before the PR - always. A well developed strategy will help you identify your PR goals, and give you a blueprint of how to achieve them. Strong PR strategies are a time investment, but when done right, will help you achieve excellent PR coverage that shares your story, and places you directly in front of your customer. In 2024, a strong strategy must include; - Ideal customer/client breakdown - Key messages and tone of voice - Competitor analysis - Key PR targets and goals, and how to achieve them - Content creation and digital engagement - A competitor analysis - Monitoring and measurement - Crisis comms - A strategy must be adaptable! If implemented correctly, you will meet your PR goals and beyond.

Like someone rightly pointed out: Change is the only constant in life. We need to embrace change and revise our strategies as and when required. I can't think of any business that flourished while being obstinate or living in the past.

Once you understand that you can't control the media, you can only get ahead of the message, your ability to improve your PR strategy in support of your company goals gets a lot easier. Nothing in life stays the same- and that's so true in media and content. Market Trends and trend reports are constantly seeming to contradict themselves, but usually that's just because sometimes that's how much the market is actually changing. Staying on top of your IPC needs and desires (the problems that your company solves) and the "buying trends" that are affecting the average consumer, you can stay ahead of market shifts and always be the right answer for your [probably constantly evolving] customer base.

I would rather twist the question a bit. Because often, it is the absence of buy in from top management that impacts the aligning of PR goals with organizational strategies. If the value of PR is recognized at the top, PR professionals do not struggle to fit in. They are able to share strategies that align with the overall business objectives without fear of budgetary constraints.

Paid media shouldn’t be the go to for something that would be better suited for an owned channel. You’ll see brands chase after paid media for the sake of getting coverage over something that would have been more suited for their blogs, microsites, and/or social media pages. Don’t wast budget on something that could have better value being done for free.

This article doesn’t actually deliver on the promise of the headline. Basic information. Bland remix with no flavor. Go back to the drawing board and start again.

One thing which is helpful is to always demonstrate the value PR brings to the company's buttom line. By showing value and bringing in more business, you would be able to highlight PR's contribution to the organisation

Aligning PR goals with company strategy may sound a bit abstract, what is really key is to understand the strategy of your key stakeholders and make sure whatever it is (like mentioned product launch), you stay aligned with company-wide narratives and priorities.