Set the objective before anything else.
Every digital PR strategy starts with one decision: is the coverage there to earn links, build the brand, or both? The answer changes everything downstream, so make it explicitly rather than assuming it.
If the objective is links, you'll choose stories for the pages they can point to, and you will judge the programme on referring domains and organic visibility. If it's brand, you'll choose stories for the readers they reach and judge it on brand search and share of search. Most programmes want both, which is fine, but one has to lead when a story choice forces a trade-off.
Write the objective as a sentence a finance director would accept: "Earn editorial links to our three category pages so they can compete for the terms we are currently losing." Vague objectives produce vague campaigns. Our PR for SEO page explains how the link objective works in practice.
Pick the target pages and the assets that will earn the links.
Journalists rarely link to a product or category page, because there is nothing on it worth citing. They link to the thing they're writing about: a study, an index, a tool, a piece of original analysis. So a strategy needs two lists.
The first is the target pages, the commercial pages that need authority. Keep it to two to four; spreading a quarter's coverage across twenty pages helps none of them. The second is the linkable assets, one per page group, that will be cited. Sometimes the asset lives on the target page itself. More often it's a dedicated page that passes authority to the money pages through internal links.
Check the target pages before you start. If they are slow, thin or not indexed, fix that first, because no amount of earned coverage rescues a page that does not work.
Decide where the stories will come from.
Stories come from three sources, and a strategy should weigh all three before choosing campaigns.
Data is the most reliable. Internal data first: sales patterns, search behaviour on your site, operational numbers nobody outside has seen. Then public data you can analyse in a new way. Then commissioned surveys, which cost money but produce findings you own. Data-led PR is the backbone of most programmes for this reason.
Expertise is the fastest. A spokesperson with genuine opinions, willing to be quoted at short notice, earns expert comment coverage that no data study can, because it fits into stories other people are already writing.
Product is the most visual. Something new, seasonal or unusual gives shopping and lifestyle desks a reason to feature you, and it works on a calendar instead of a news cycle.
List what you have under each heading. The gaps tell you what to build.
Plan the format mix and the calendar.
A good quarter mixes formats, because each does a different job and each fails in a different way. A typical shape looks like this:
- Lead campaigns, usually data studies or indexes, built to earn links to the priority asset
- A supporting layer of expert comment, pitched around the lead stories and the news it touches
- A reactive layer, prepared in advance and ready when the news cycle hands you a relevant moment
- Seasonal or product hooks wherever the calendar offers them
Map these against the events you can already see: rate decisions, budgets, regulatory changes, awareness days, retail seasons and your own launches. Then leave room, because the best reactive coverage comes from moments nobody planned. The campaign formats page describes each shape in more detail, including how the reactive layer is kept ready.
Target journalists, not publications.
A media list built from mastheads is a list of places you would like to appear. A media list built from journalists is a list of people who might write about you. Build the second kind.
Start with beats. Who covers personal finance for the nationals, property for the regionals, your category for the trade press? Read what each wrote in the last month. If your story wouldn't sit naturally beside it, take them off the list. Then note how each prefers to be pitched; some want data cut for their patch, some want a quote within the hour, some want an exclusive or nothing.
Small, tailored lists beat large ones every time. Thirty well-chosen journalists with individually written pitches will outperform five hundred on a blast, and they will still open your emails next quarter. That is the whole basis of media relations as we practise it.
Measure, iterate, and keep the strategy on one page.
Measure the things the objective named. For links: referring domains that are new and relevant, and organic visibility on the target pages. For brand: brand search volume and share of search. Report both alongside every placement, and read them quarterly, because monthly swings are mostly noise. Our guide to measuring digital PR covers the detail.
Then iterate. Keep the formats that earned coverage, retire the ones that did not, and let a strong asset feed the next quarter's comment and reactive work.
The strategy itself should fit on one page:
- Objective, in one sentence
- Target pages, two to four
- Linkable assets, one per page group
- Story sources: data, expertise, product
- Format mix for the quarter
- Calendar of known hooks
- Media targets by beat
- Measures and review dates
- Budget, including extras
If it doesn't fit, it isn't yet a strategy.