How to Identify the Success of Your Public Relations Campaign Objectives
- amery paige
- Mar 8, 2023
- 3 min read
When identifying your campaign’s objectives, it is important to realize what makes an efficient and successful objective. By using the eleven characteristics of a well formulated objective, a public relations researcher and campaign conductor should be able to identify whether or not their objectives are ideal for their campaign, or could use some tweaking, in order to be beneficial to the overall campaign. Here are five of the most important characteristics of a great campaign objective:
Goal Rooted
To put it in simpler terms, objectives and goals might be very similar when identifying during a public relations campaign. Your objective should be rooted in a goal. This means that when you identify an objective, you must make sure that there is a goal behind it. A goal could include “parallel financial projections, marketing ambitions, advertising or promotional expectations” and more (Smith). Public relations objectives should be rooted in a final, anticipated goal. A public relations professional should not “get tempted and formulate loads of different goals - the key to great results is focus” (CITE). You can focus on two or three main goals for your campaign, in order to have a higher chance of success in achieving them and remain consistent in measuring them.
2. Public Focused
When conducting a public relations campaign and identifying your objectives, you must, first, identify your publics. Identifying your key publics is essential to a successful campaign. You can ask yourself questions about who your campaign is geared for or appeals to, in order to help identify your publics. Your objectives must be focused on your public. Whether you are trying to appeal to the public to read something, purchase something, etc. your objectives should be readily linked to a specific public.
3. Impact Oriented
The impacts that you hope to make through your campaign are important when identifying your objectives. How you want your publics to be impacted is a direct reflection of one of the key steps when identifying the objectives of your public relations campaign. An easy way to identify the impacts from your campaign is to ask yourself, “What am I hoping to achieve through this public relations campaign?”
4. Research Based
Research might not be every public relations professional’s favorite part of conducting a campaign, but it is the most important step. Your objectives should not all be identified at the drop of a hat, on a whim. You should take the time to conduct research, in order to understand your publics, their desires, your target market, etc. Through research, you can gain accurate information that will help your campaign stand out among competitors.
5. Measurable
When identifying your campaigns objectives, you should identify whether or not they are measurable. Smith states that objectives are “defined and quantifiable, with clear measures that state the degree of change being sought” (Smith). A public relations professional can use metrics, which “measure PR performance and help gauge how a given marketing campaign performs,” to help gauge the success of a campaign (Hakim). These can be used to compare with other data from your research or other scholarly research. Metrics can be used to, also, compare your data with the competitors, or used as a benchmark for the success of your campaign.
Works Cited
Hakim, G. (n.d.). What is pr measurement? how to showcase your PR SUCCESS. Learn Hub. Retrieved March 8, 2023, from https://learn.g2.com/pr-measurement#:~:text=PR%20measurement%20is%20the%20process,a%20given%20marketing%20campaign%20performs.
Hostreviews.co.uk, S. P.-. (2019, June 14). Photo by Stephen Phillips - hostreviews.co.uk on unsplash. Beautiful Free Images & Pictures. Retrieved March 8, 2023, from https://unsplash.com/photos/shr_Xn8S8QU
Mahler, S. (n.d.). How to set and measure PR goals. pr.co blog. Retrieved March 8, 2023, from https://www.pr.co/blog/how-to-set-and-measure-pr-goals
Smith, R. D. (2021). Step 2: Analyzing the Organization. In Strategic planning for public relations (pp. 58-78). essay, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Overgoor, R. (2021, January 13). Photo by Ronnie Overgoor on unsplash. Beautiful Free Images & Pictures. Retrieved March 8, 2023, from https://unsplash.com/photos/EdKCckXXRCI
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