MARKETING Archives - CACM Accounts

PR PROGRAMMES MUST HAVE OBJECTIVES

In order to maximise return on investment, PR programmes should serve an actual purpose. PR for the sake of PR will most likely fail to produce a tangible result. Instead, each PR programme your business undertakes should tie in with at least one strategic objective of your enterprise. For example, your strategic objective could be to target more customers in a certain socio-economic group, or to encourage a repeat purchase.

As an industry, PR is packed full of creative people who can generate unique ideas to help you. However, all of this creativity means very little unless it is working towards a specific purpose. The starting point for any campaign, therefore, must be to identify what the commercial objectives of the business are. Business owners should consider “what success looks like” if everything goes to plan; the business should then be able to measure or quantify that success. Only at this point should you get creative and come up with the ideas to create the standout PR campaign that the business needs.

pr programmes

An effective PR campaign will capture the attention of the media, as well as the interest of your clients and prospects. Such a programme should aim to engage with the target audience and communicate a “call to action” in order to help the business achieve its objectives.

Remember that the profile of your brand is critical to your success. Increasingly, consumers buy products and services from companies because they value or respect the brand. Customers tend to look at the detailed features and benefits of a product or service second. The key, therefore, is to make your brand your target customer’s first choice.

Your business must live up to its brand promise and deliver what clients expect it to deliver. Your PR programme should reinforce this.

SETTING EFFECTIVE KPIs.

Setting goals and a strategy for your business is important. However you then need to measure how the business is performing in order to understand if the firm is moving forward and is on track to achieve its goals. As such it is necessary to set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). However many business owners and managers find this difficult to do and see the establishment of KPIs as a pen-pushing exercise and don’t dedicate time to do this.

KPIs however, form a vital element of the business’s sales strategy, both for individuals and for the team itself. In order to create a shared vision, commitment and firm-wide motivation, it is vital that the KPIs are discussed with and agreed by each member of the team from the outset. KPIs should cover:

KPIs

Team targets (i.e. convert 75% of all leads during the first quarter of 2015)
Individual targets (i.e. 80% of chargeable time billed each month in 2015)
Key tasks

The nature and specific tasks of your KPIs will depend very much on variations including the market sector and geographical area in which you operate. However, managers must ensure that they follow the SMART principal – that is, ensuring that objectives are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.

Depending on your business, it can be useful to adopt a traffic light approach for each client account, so areas of strength and weakness can be easily and quickly identified. This data can be fed into charts which can also be very useful when preparing KPIs, giving specific objectives and demonstrating how the results have a direct impact on the overall sales and business objectives.

Once set, KPIs should then be reviewed on a regular basis, both with the team as a whole and with individual team members. Any variance in performance can then be identified and flagged appropriately, with remedial actions put in place before any aspect of the traffic light chart turns to amber. Bear in mind that KPIs should always be dynamic. For example, even if a KPI target hasn’t been met, the individual or team performance may still be on course to achieve the overall sales objective, and the KPI target may need to be lowered. Similarly, if a target has been met, then it may need to be increased at intervals, to maintain drive and motivation.