Firstly, sorry for the lack of blogging! A lot of things have been going on at the moment in my life so it has been hard to find a moment where I can sit down and blog. However, I have now found that moment… and I’m back today to talk about my key tips on how to build a successful campaign.
It is hard to judge what makes a campaign successful, there are many factors that play a role, some that you can’t even control yourself. However, making sure you have done what you needed to do as a PR is the starting point…
I have personally worked on a few very successful campaigns during my PR experience and it is great to see them unfold and develop.
So, let’s get started! Here are my tips to make sure you have got everything covered!
Tip 1:
What are your objectives? If you don’t know what you want to achieve, how are you going to measure its success? Make sure you define a set of objectives. I usually go for 3 – 4 and follow the SMART approach. Your objectives need to be ‘Specific’ ‘Measurable’ ‘Accurate’ ‘Realistic’ and ‘Time Bound’.
Tip 2:
What are the basics/current situation? Before you can even come up with campaign ideas, you need to do some research! Find out what the press are talking about at the moment, the recent coverage the brand or organisation you’re working for at the moment has received and look into other brands campaigns. What worked and what didn’t? You don’t want to repeat something that has already been done.
Tip 3:
Who is your audience? So who are you going to be targeting this campaign at? Try and narrow down your audience, segregate it into sections i.e Keyword, Personalities, Lifestyle, Attributes etc. Write everything down you associate with the target audience you have chosen. You can now understand how to target them better by doing so.
Tip 4:
What are your key messages? You need to make sure you structure what your key messages are. Your key messages are basically what you want to communicate to your audience through this campaign. It could be something like “(Title of programme) is the first UK-based documentary written by (Name of writer) premiering on (Name of Channel)”.
Tip 5:
Your Ideas: I always find it best to construct a mind map when drawing up my ideas, this way you can see everything together and notice whether some of your ideas interlinks or relate to each other. It is also a great way of narrowing them down to pick out your main solid achievable ideas that will help define your campaign.
Tip 6:
Measurement Is Key: How are you going to show your boss or client that you spent their budget wisely and generated successful results? Web analytics tools are key. They generate online reports that show your statistics for social media and social chat. By social chat I mean the ‘buzz’ you’ll be generating. Using these reports will help you see whether your objectives have been met. Key tools I use are: SumAll, Google Analytics, Curalate and YouTube Insights.
Tip 7:
The VMM Is Your New Best Friend! Heard of the Valid Metrics Matrix? No? Well, where have you been? The Valid Metrics Matrix or VMM for short is a key tool used to evaluate the success of your campaign and is overall the thing that is going to show you if the campaign worked. It aligns your Public Relations Activity(The campaign itself) with the Intermediary Effect (Journalists, Bloggers, Secondary publicists) and the Target Audience Effect (The Campaign’s Audience). It is worth checking out and is great to see the evaluation unfold as the campaign runs. It isn’t just a tool to use right at the end but one that helps see the success as and when it happens.
These are just some of the processes I take in order to make sure my PR campaign is successful. I hope you find the tips useful and insightful. Let me know how your campaigns work and whether you have some key tips and tools you stick by?
PaigeHileyPR 