How to build a PR strategy that delivers results

By: Emily John, Associate Director

Public Relations (PR) is no longer just distributing press releases and achieving media coverage. Today, a strong PR strategy is about building trust, shaping narratives, and driving business outcomes. Whether your business is launching a new product, maintaining its reputation, or increasing brand awareness, a well-structured PR plan is crucial.  

But the question is, how do you build a PR strategy that works - especially in the world of B2B PR?

In this blog, I am going to share the key components of a PR strategy, ensuring that it aligns with your goals, target audiences, and success metrics.  

Defining the objectives 

Every PR strategy should begin with a clear understanding of what you want to achieve. Objectives are the ‘why’ behind the plan and help define what success looks like.

The key is to create objectives that align with your business goals, industry, and strategic priorities. It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to achieve everything all at once. Instead, prioritise two to three core objectives for each campaign, ensuring they are SMART and have a set of KPIs associated with them.  

Understanding the audience 

Once the objectives have been set, next step in building a B2B PR strategy is knowing exactly who you want to reach. This is vital in ensuring the messaging resonates with the right people, at the right time and in the right places.  

Consider demographics like age, location, job title or industry, as well as what challenges they are facing that you can solve. After this has been identified, you will be able to segment your audience's and tailor the messaging accordingly.  

Crafting the messaging 

Messaging is at the heart of a PR strategy. It defines what you want to say, how you say it and why it matters to your audiences. Strong messaging can give communications consistency and purpose when speaking to journalists, investors, employees, or customers, whilst aligning with the brand’s identity. 

The first step is to create a core positioning statement, before building supporting messages and proof points that address the audience’s needs and reinforces your credibility. These elements form a framework that guides the messaging across all aspects of the PR campaign. It also enables you to speak with one voice, while remaining adaptable to different audiences or contexts.  

Selecting the right tactics 

Different PR goals will require different PR tactics. For example, a product launch would benefit from a press release that is distributed to industry publications, while a brand awareness campaign may be better suited to thought leadership, interviews, or podcasts. The goal is to connect your messages through the most effective platforms.  

It’s important not to solely rely on one PR channel as an integrated approach creates multiple touch points for engagement and reinforces your message across different formats. You may also want to consider combining earned, owned, shared, and paid media for maximum impact.  

Setting the KPIs 

To know whether the PR campaign is achieving its objectives, you will need measurable indicators of success. KPIs will help quantify progress and demonstrate value to your stakeholders. While metrics like media impressions and social likes are helpful, the KPIs should link to your business goals.  

Choosing a mix of short-term and long-term metrics is recommended and these can be tracked using various tools like Cision, Meltwater or Google Analytics. The main factor here is to demonstrate how your PR efforts are contributing to your visibility, engagement, and overall growth.  

Monitoring the plan 

Regularly reviewing performance data to access whether the PR strategy and tactics are working is vital. By looking at media coverage, brand sentiment and messaging, you will be able to determine what is resonating and where changes or improvements need to be made.

You should treat each campaign as an opportunity to refine and apply any learnings to future PR efforts. This may involve adjusting the messaging, switching up tactics or exploring new channels - it’s important to evolve with the business, your audience, and the media environment to position PR for sustainable success.  

Final thoughts

A successful PR strategy goes beyond media coverage, it provides a roadmap that connects communications with your overarching business goals, engages the right audiences and delivers measurable results.

By defining the objectives, understanding your audience, crafting compelling messaging, choosing the right tactics, setting KPIS, and monitoring performance you can use your PR activity to drive growth, credibility and ensure long-term success. If you're looking to take your PR strategy to the next level but not sure where to start reach out to our team for a free strategy call.