The Complete Guide to PR Planning in the Age of Growth Marketing

Your agency contract is about to expire. You want to know if there's a way to deliver more with less budget, if there's a new agency delivering awesome results, or even if it's worth keeping the one you already have. What to consider when making this important decision that can bring important results for the business or for your bonus? This is the question we want to answer in this post, which, obviously, comes with our bias of wanting to convince you to pick up the phone and schedule a call with us. Kidding aside, let's look at our beliefs about what every PR Agency should do for its clients. It all starts with our understanding of your company's business objectives. Does your brand need more awareness? Are you looking for investors? Do you need to increase sales and revenue? Or do you need a new positioning in the market? Next, we need to understand how the brand’s share of voice is. Who appears more, your brand, or your competitors? Why, how and where do they appear? Are the articles positive, neutral or negative? And then we seek to understand what your competitors are doing, market trends and international references. Then comes the strategy, which we divide into 7 steps. We define communication objectives, KPIs and Metrics. We developed our PR Concept, the essence of what we want journalists and influencers to write about the brand in the press and on social media. Generally the PR Concept is a phrase, but it is not a slogan, we'll not publish it anywhere. Its function is merely to serve as inspiration for the strategy. From the PR Concept, we develop the company's Strategic Narrative, a document that encompasses all the messages that the brand has to communicate, in the right tone and style for journalists and influencers. We create the Editorial Planning, a document that details the timing of working on topics, considering company announcements, seasonal dates, hot topics and agenda suggestions, which in international PR jargon we call Pitch. We develop our Media List, identifying and dividing the most relevant vehicles for the brand. We help define spokespersons and train them in Media Training sessions, focused on messages and practical exercises. In some situations we develop PR Stunts. These are public events, many of which are bold, created specifically to capture the attention of the press and influencers, and thus go viral. We love doing this! Step seven concerns the analysis of results. During the strategy, we define how to deliver our reports and how we will evaluate them to make strategic decisions, which may involve celebrating great results and adjusting routes. Reports should be short, clear and make it easy for the PR person to sell the value of the work internally. The relationship with the agency on a day-to-day basis. For our clients, the constant presence of the company's senior leadership on the front lines or behind the scenes makes all the difference. Good agencies closely monitor the relationship between staff serving the accounts, guide, develop, and help the team to perform. Furthermore, here at SmartPR we like to say that having incredible ideas counts a lot, but it's the execution that pays the bills, ours and our clients'. Therefore, our work methodology, our processes, workflows, SLAs, digital tools and meeting routine were created to simplify execution and bring transparency so that our clients can monitor the work closely. Clients who dedicate time to this monitoring have the best results. In summary, if your agency contract is about to expire, or if you are looking for an agency, feel free to use our checklist to make your decision.  As always, if you need anything, we'll be more than happy to support you and to share with you the results we achieve for our clients, everyday, following our checklist, step by step.

Are you familiar with the community management concept? Understand the importance of creating communities and how brands can do this.

The content funnel is a strategic tool for brands who need to reach their customers.

Want to rock it in 2024? Create your 2024 communications plan based on SmartPR's PR predictions.

Having a blog is no longer an option for companies. It is the main initiative to increase brand traffic on the internet

PR strategies can be very diverse, but it is clear that videos generate good engagement. Learn how to prepare spokespeople to face the cameras.

ESG and PR agenda. Companies committed to ESG deserve exceptional communication strategies.

Wondering how to be considered an authority in your segment? Thought Leadership strategies is the way to go.

Is a restaurant worth it? If it's in the Michelin Guide, it must be a good choice. Take a look in our blog.