A well-oiled public relations (PR) campaign can easily propel your business to new heights and give you much-needed exposure to new audiences and markets. Done incorrectly, however, aside from wasting resources, your PR campaign won’t yield the results you’re looking for.
Below are three common mistakes that usually lead to PR fails and what you need to do to make sure that your campaign is solid from beginning to end.
Not Having a Targeted Goal in Mind
Lots of businesses embark on a PR campaign with only the ambiguous goal of gaining publicity, but without a clear outcome in mind, such as increasing revenue, leads or traffic. Having a clear goal is essential so that you can track your desired results and see a return on your investment.
You can fix this by partnering with a public relations firm in Phoenix, AZ. Together, set a target goal for your campaign, like generating a specific amount of leads from your website or increasing traffic to your site. After deciding on your goal, measure your results to monitor what works and what doesn’t with your campaign.
Not Having the Right Stories and Media Contacts
You have to pitch the right story to the right media contact. It’s your responsibility to throw a compelling and valuable story that would help your contact understand why your story is newsworthy and why it’s worth anyone’s time.
It’s critical that you research various media contacts before sending them your pitch so that you’ll know exactly what stories they’re interested in and their writing style. Check out their social media, blog and website to get a better feel for their beat. Read their past work so you can see what kind of stories they cover so that you won’t waste your time, or theirs.
Not Having KPIs for Measuring Your Progress
You have to select the most suitable key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can utilize for measuring your PR campaign’s progress. To do this, start by creating a spreadsheet that you can record every pitch you sent out, the date you sent it out, what you pitched, and whom you pitched it to. Keep track of your follow-ups and responses you receive for every pitch.
Keeping track of these KPIs will aid you in establishing trends for which contacts respond well to your pitches and what stories work the most among others. Doing so will enable you to consistently tweak and adjust your PR strategy and ultimately optimize it to your specific goals.
Knowing and understanding these common mistakes that result in PR campaign fails would give you the necessary knowledge and action plan that you could implement to fix your campaign before you need to do major damage control.
Keep in mind though that you need to consistently work on your PR campaign to ensure that it’s always on point. As you work on it, you will find out the most effective methods and styles that generate the most favorable results for your PR goals.
