You wouldn’t use the same dipping sauce for every meal regardless of the food, would you? Caramel sauce may go well with desserts, but does it pair well with tacos or salad? It’s the same concept for public relations; different situations require different tactics, and sometimes multiple tactics together, like mixing different sauces and spices, get the job done best.
For example, let’s say your client is planning to launch an annual international event. If their goal upon launch is to make as many people aware of the new event as possible, a simple news release won’t be enough. Creating awareness means being proactive and telling the whole story, through multiple channels.
In this case, a good diversification of tactics would be to plan and send a news release, follow-up with reporters over the phone, plan and implement a social media strategy, plan and implement an influencer strategy and push ideas that promote the spread of information by word-of-mouth. All these tactics work separately and together to create an ecosphere of communications to achieve the client’s goal.
The strategic consideration of a tactic that will help your client get where they want to go comes partly from trial and experience as well as a baseline of research: Formal, informal, primary and secondary insights.
If your client is opening a new mountain biking trail in town and their goal is to get cyclists to use it, then you’ll need to focus part of your research on where those local cyclists get their mountain biking information from. If you find that they get a lot of their cycling news from social media, then native and paid posts about the new trail would be good tactic choices.
You’ll also have to consider how tactics work together and affect and support each other. For example, if you are planning to drive additional traffic to a landing page or other online content, a native media campaign is an excellent tactic to target audiences and get your message in front of a larger audience while generating traffic back to your site.
- News releases
- Research and Strategy
- Media advisories and alerts
- Paid social media campaigns
- Native media campaigns
- Public service announcements
- Promotional videos
- Flyers and posters
- Satellite media tours
- Radio media tours
- Livestream media conferences
- Radio segments and podcasts
Learn more about one of our integrated public relations campaign.
Need help diversifying your company’s public relations tactics? We’re here to help!