Creating business impact requires clearly defined objectives

We’re always busy making plans, but how do you know when you’ve reached the finish line?

For any campaign to be successful, you need to set up targets and define a purpose so that internal and external teams know what everyone is collectively working towards – this is a key part of planning. Investing time into clearly defining your objectives will makes the difference between communications that drives noise and communications that creates real business impact.

So, what’s good practice for setting this up for the team? We’ve all heard about SMART goals and objectives that can be used in any life situation, but for communications objectives, here are a few suggestions.

1. Understand your client’s business goal: As a PR professional, one of the most important questions you should know the answer to is ‘What is your client’s business goal?’ Is it to launch a new product or service, change consumer perception, drive online conversations or create digital marketing impact? Knowing what your client wants to achieve is key to your success, as this will allow you to set the right communications objectives from day one.
2. Don’t make assumptions: Take time to do some research into your client’s stakeholder audiences. How are they perceived in the market? What values do people believe they have? Who is the competition? What is it important to them? And finally link this back to what role your client wants to play in their industry.
3. Set your measurement metrics: Key performance indicators (KPIs), reporting and regular communications is important to showcase your value. If your client is a hotel, and the goal is to increase room bookings, make sure you ask about booking rates every month so you understand the monthly occupational rate of the hotel and whether the specific social ad created could have led to this increase. If the goal was to create buzz and excitement for an event, make sure you know how many people attended. At Sinclair, we use the AMEC model to help us measure how our communication objectives meet our client’s business goals.
4. Focus: Think about all communication channels you are using for the campaign, such as media relations, influencer marketing or social media content, what you want to achieve through each of them, and then create an action plan to meet those goals.

At Sinclair, you will see that the work showcased on our website (our work) always talks about the challenge that was set by the client, how we built an approach to reach these objectives, and how we created business impact through our campaigns and strategies. Here are a few examples across industry for you to see what the business goal was and what communication objectives were set in order to create real impact:

Corporate

FWD – ‘Celebrate Living’ with a unique and resonating story

Design & Architecture

JERDE – Defining ‘Experience Makes a Difference’

Hospitality

K11 ARTUS – Launching Asia’s first ‘artisanal home’ concept

Education

Yew Chung College of Early Childhood Education – Boosting student recruitment from the APAC region

Retail

Tsuchiya Kaban – Establishing a luxury brand in the Hong Kong market

Travel

Singapore Tourism Board – Boosting off-peak visitors with ‘Singlish Fun’

F&B

Johnnie Walker – Expanding the brand’s demographic through social media

Always remember, setting the right communications objectives will set you up for success in meeting business goals.