Blog
December 2009 – Amy Bullard writes…
The importance of planning
When working in a PR agency, often you will find that you are working on several different clients at any given time. This can mean that although you have a nicely written ‘to-do’ list, your workload can change at any given moment.
However, although PR is often full of reactive elements – dealing with various crisis situations, urgent topical comments and so on, it is important to set aside the time to work with your client to establish and develop a proactive PR strategy.
Take my current workload as a case study – although it is only the start of November, I am already drafting at least three different PR strategies for 2010 for some of my clients. By doing this, not only will my clients be able to tell me what they want to achieve by this time next year, but I will have an idea of how I want to work and which particular press to target.
Establishing a proactive PR strategy is crucial as not only does it give me the opportunity to really think about what I want to achieve with my campaign, it gives me the chance to brainstorm new ideas for my clients.
Proactive planning for our clients not only helps to develop what we are already doing, but it offers the chance to think outside the box and explore potential for new opportunities. Over the past year, our ability to establish proactive PR strategies has not only helped grow various accounts, but it has also led to the creation of some of our major campaign work including National Plughole Week (for our client Challs International), Road Safety Awareness (for Ford Retail) and Learning to Save (Ipswich Building Society).
Of course day-to-day client work and reactive PR is often more time-critical than the time spent devising a comprehensive strategy, but if you can set aside time to think about your client – what they want to achieve, when it needs to be achieved by and, importantly, how you need to go about achieving their objectives, then you are on the right path to a successful partnership.
