Most brands I speak to for the first time have the same problem. They have been doing PR for months, sometimes years. They have press releases going out, social media accounts running, and occasionally a journalist writes about them. But when I ask what their PR strategy is, the answer is usually a list of activities. Send releases every month. Pitch journalists for product stories. Post on LinkedIn twice a week.
That is not a strategy. That is a to-do list. And the difference between the two is the difference between communications that builds something and communications that just keeps the lights on.
A strategy tells you why you are doing each thing, who you are doing it for, what you want them to think and do afterwards, and how you will know it worked. Everything else follows from that. At StrategyVerse, we use a six-step framework to build PR strategies for new clients, and it applies whether you are a two-year-old startup or a company that has been operating for decades and never formalised its approach to communications.
Step One: Audit Where You Actually Stand
Before you can plan anything, you need an honest picture of your current position. This is the step most brands skip because it feels like looking backwards when you want to move forwards. That is exactly why they keep making the same mistakes.
A proper PR audit covers four things. First, your media presence: what coverage you have received in the past twelve months, in which publications, on which topics, with what tone. Are you being covered at all? Are you being covered in the right places? Is the coverage reflecting the narrative you want, or is it driven by whatever journalists happened to find interesting about you? Second, your brand perception: what your key audiences — customers, investors, potential hires, industry peers — actually think about you, not what your internal team believes they think. Third, your competitive positioning: what your peers and competitors are doing in communications, where they are getting coverage, and whether there are gaps in the conversation that you could own. Fourth, your existing assets: what thought leadership content, data, spokespeople, and stories you already have that could be put to work.
The audit will almost certainly surface surprises. That is the point. Go in without assumptions.
Step Two: Define What Success Actually Looks Like
This step sounds obvious and is almost always done wrong. The most common mistake is setting PR objectives that are divorced from business objectives. Things like "increase brand awareness" or "get more media coverage" are not objectives. They are outcomes of good PR, but they do not tell you whether the PR is serving the business.
Good PR objectives are anchored to what the business needs to achieve. If the company is entering a new market, the PR objective is to establish credibility and brand recognition in that market within a specific timeframe. If the company is preparing for a fundraising round, the objective is to build the kind of narrative that resonates with investors and ensure that their due diligence process surfaces a consistent, compelling story. If the company is struggling with talent acquisition, the objective is to build employer brand visibility in the communities where your future hires are paying attention.
Each objective should have a measurable target attached to it. Not "increase coverage" but "secure coverage in at least three Tier 1 industry publications per quarter." Not "build thought leadership" but "have our CEO quoted in mainstream business media at least once a month on our core topic." Specific targets make it possible to assess whether you are on track. Vague aspirations do not.
Step Three: Map Your Audiences With Precision
When PR professionals talk about their audience, they usually mean journalists. That is a dangerous oversimplification. Your PR strategy needs to account for every group of people whose perception of your brand matters to your business objectives.
Depending on your situation, that might include customers, prospective customers, existing investors, prospective investors, potential employees, industry analysts and commentators, regulatory bodies, partner companies, and the general public. Each of these audiences has different information needs, different sources they trust, different things they care about, and different ways they interact with your brand story.
Map them out. For each audience, answer three questions: What do they currently think about us? What do we need them to think? What do they need to hear, from whom, and in what format, to make that shift? The answers drive every downstream decision — which channels to use, which stories to tell, which spokespeople to put forward, and which journalists to build relationships with.
Step Four: Build Your Message Architecture
Every brand needs a message architecture: a structured hierarchy of what you stand for, why it matters, and how you prove it. Without this, your communications will be inconsistent. Different spokespeople will say different things. Different pieces of content will emphasise different aspects of your story. Over time, the market will struggle to form a coherent picture of what you actually are.
A message architecture starts with your core proposition — the single most important thing you want every audience to understand about your brand. From there, it branches into supporting messages tailored to each key audience, and beneath each supporting message, you have proof points: the specific facts, case studies, data, and stories that make the message credible. This is not about creating a script. It is about ensuring that regardless of which spokesperson is speaking or which channel the story is appearing in, the same core narrative comes through.
The message architecture also needs to be tested before it is deployed. Share it with a small group of external stakeholders — people who are not inside your bubble — and see whether it resonates. Often the language that feels natural internally lands very differently with an external audience.
Step Five: Select Channels Based on Where Your Audiences Are
Channel selection is where strategy becomes execution planning. The question here is simply: where does each of your target audiences consume information that influences their perception of brands like yours? The answer should drive your channel choices, not the other way around.
For a B2B company selling enterprise software, your decision-makers are probably consuming content through LinkedIn, industry analyst reports, specialist trade publications, and professional conferences. A mass-market consumer goods brand is working with an entirely different channel mix: lifestyle media, influencer networks, social platforms with high visual engagement, and consumer news outlets. Building a PR strategy that deploys the same channel mix for both situations is a waste of time and resources.
Prioritise ruthlessly. A focused presence in the three channels that genuinely reach your key audiences will always outperform a diluted presence across ten channels. This is especially true in the early stages of a PR programme when you are still building relationships and earning credibility. Once you understand what your PR strategy is trying to accomplish and who you need to reach, the right channels usually become obvious.
Step Six: Set Up Measurement Before You Start
The reason so many PR programmes fail to demonstrate value is that measurement is treated as something you do after the activity, not something you design before it. If you have not decided how you will measure success before the first press release goes out, you will end up counting outputs — number of articles, number of mentions, total reach — rather than the outcomes that actually matter to the business.
We use a three-level measurement framework. The first level tracks outputs: the direct results of PR activity such as media placements, spokesperson interviews, social media engagement, and event appearances. These tell you whether the programme is generating the right kind of activity. The second level tracks outtakes: the effect on audience awareness, understanding, and sentiment. This typically requires periodic research — brand perception surveys, media sentiment analysis, share of voice tracking. The third level tracks outcomes: the business results that the PR programme was designed to support, such as inbound inquiries, qualified leads, talent applications, partnership conversations, or investor interest. Connecting PR activity to these business outcomes is the single most important thing you can do to secure continued investment in your communications programme.
Measure all three levels, but report on all three levels too. Showing your leadership team a slide of media clips is not enough. Show them the movement in brand perception and the business results that followed the PR activity. That is what earns a seat at the table.
The Framework in Practice
These six steps are sequential for a reason. You cannot set meaningful objectives until you know where you stand. You cannot build the right messages until you know who you are speaking to. You cannot choose the right channels until you know what messages you are carrying. And you cannot measure what you have not defined. Skipping steps creates strategies that look coherent on paper and fall apart in execution.
When we onboard a new client at StrategyVerse, we typically spend the first two to three weeks working through steps one to three: the audit, the objectives, and the audience mapping. Those three steps alone tend to shift the brand's thinking about what they have been doing and what they should be doing instead. The strategy document — messages, channels, and KPIs — then comes together relatively quickly because the foundation is solid.
If you are starting from scratch, do not rush the early steps. The quality of your PR strategy is determined entirely by the quality of the thinking that goes into those first three stages. Everything after that is execution. And before you start, it is worth thinking clearly about what you want from the agency or team you bring in to help — because who executes the strategy matters as much as the strategy itself.
The brands that build lasting reputations are not the ones that do the most PR activity. They are the ones that do the right PR activity, consistently, with a clear sense of purpose. That starts with a strategy worth the name.