A PR plan is a written document that links one communications goal to audiences, messages, tactics, a schedule, a budget and a measurement method. Write it in eight steps: research, goals, audiences, messages, strategy, tactics, schedule and budget, and measurement. The Barcelona Principles 4.0, released by AMEC in June 2025, put clear, measurable objectives first among their seven principles, so the goal step comes before any tactic.
What are the eight steps of a PR plan?
The eight steps of a PR plan run from research to measurement, and each step produces one named output that the next step uses. The table below is a planning template. Fill in one row per step before anyone approves a tactic.
| Step | Question it answers | Output |
|---|
| 1. Research | What is the situation, and who covers it? | Situation analysis, media audit, competitor audit |
| 2. Goals | What must change, by how much, by when? | Two to four measurable objectives |
| 3. Audiences | Who must believe or do something different? | Audience list ranked by priority |
| 4. Messages | What will each audience hear? | One core message and proof points per audience |
| 5. Strategy | Which approach reaches the goal? | A one-paragraph strategic choice |
| 6. Tactics | Which activities carry the strategy? | Activity list tied to each objective |
| 7. Schedule and budget | Who does what, by when, at what cost? | Timeline, owners, budget by channel |
| 8. Measurement | How will results be tracked and reported? | Baselines, metrics, reporting dates |
The order matters because each later step depends on the earlier one. A tactic chosen before the goal is set has nothing to be measured against.
How do you research a PR plan?
Research for a PR plan answers three questions: what people already say about the organization, which outlets and creators cover the category, and what competitors earned in the past year. The output is a situation analysis that a reader can check against sources.
Start with a media audit that lists every outlet, reporter and creator who covered the organization or its competitors in the last 12 months, and record what each one wrote. Add a search audit that notes which pages and which AI answers describe the organization today. Research done to understand the situation before planning is called formative research in public relations textbooks, and EPR profiles the author of the field's best-known textbook in its page on Scott Cutlip and Effective Public Relations.
A shared definition of the field keeps the audit consistent across a team. EPR's guide to what public relations is supplies one.
How do you write PR goals that can be measured?
A measurable PR goal states an outcome, a number and a date, such as a change in share of voice or branded search volume by a named month. A count of clips is an output, not an outcome. George Doran's 1981 Management Review article gave goal writing a checklist known as SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
AMEC's Barcelona Principles reinforce the point. The first principle says clear, measurable objectives are a prerequisite for planning, measurement and evaluation. Another principle says advertising value equivalents are an invalid measure, a position AMEC has held since the first Principles in 2010. Set two to four objectives, because a plan with ten goals cannot assign a budget to any of them.
Why it works: A goal with a number and a date creates a test the plan can fail, and a plan that can fail forces choices about tactics and budget. A goal such as "raise awareness" cannot fail, so it cannot guide a choice. Source: Doran, G. T., "There's a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management's goals and objectives," Management Review, November 1981, and AMEC Barcelona Principles 4.0, June 2025.
Who are the audiences and what should each hear?
Audiences in a PR plan are the specific groups whose belief or behavior must change for the goal to be met, ranked by how much each group matters to the goal. Write each audience as a named group with one sentence about what it does today and what it should do instead, such as "procurement leads at mid-size hospitals who now shortlist three vendors from an analyst report."
Give each audience one core message and two or three proof points. A proof point is a fact the audience can verify, such as a customer count, a study result or an independent review. Messages that cannot be checked read as claims, and reporters discard them. Grunig and Hunt's four models of communication, described in EPR's guide to the four models of public relations, help decide whether a message informs, persuades or invites response.
How do you choose a strategy and tactics?
A PR strategy is a one-paragraph statement of the approach that will reach the goal, and tactics are the specific activities that carry it out. The strategy answers why this approach, and the tactics answer what the team will do. Write the strategy first, then list tactics, then delete any tactic that does not trace to an objective.
Channel choice belongs in the tactics step. The PESO framework, covered in EPR's PESO model guide, sorts channels into paid, earned, shared and owned media, which helps a team check that the plan does not rely on one channel. EPR's guide to the types of media lists the formats inside each channel.
Which frameworks can structure a PR plan?
Three long-standing frameworks give a PR plan its sequence: RACE, ROPE and ROSIE. RACE stands for research, action planning, communication and evaluation, and John Marston introduced it in his 1963 book The Nature of Public Relations. ROPE stands for research, objectives, programming and evaluation, and Jerry Hendrix proposed it. ROSIE stands for research, objectives, strategy, implementation and evaluation, and Sheila Clough Crifasi proposed it.
All three start with research and end with evaluation. The Canadian Public Relations Society requires accreditation candidates to use RACE in exam answers and work samples. The four-step process behind them was codified by Scott Cutlip and Allen Center, whose textbook first appeared in 1952 and added evaluation as the fourth step in its second edition in 1958.
Use the eight-step table when a plan needs separate rows for audiences, messages and budget. Use RACE when a plan needs one page for an executive reader.
How do you schedule and budget a PR plan?
A PR schedule assigns every tactic to a named owner and a date, and a PR budget assigns every tactic to a cost line by channel. The schedule shows dependencies, such as a study that must publish before a pitch can reference it. The budget shows which channel carries the most cost.
Illustrative example, not a real client: a software company launching a product in March plans a data study for January, pitches reporters in February, and holds paid promotion of the best coverage until the launch week. The study owner, the pitch owner and the paid media owner each get a date, and each cost line sits beside its objective. Reserve one budget line for unplanned work, because news cycles and crises do not follow the calendar.
What should the measurement section include?
The measurement section of a PR plan should include a baseline for each objective, one metric per objective, and a fixed reporting date. A baseline lets the plan show change instead of activity. The Barcelona Principles 4.0 add that reports should cover outputs, outcomes and impact, so a plan should name at least one measure at each level.
Why it works: A metric without a starting value cannot show movement, so the report defaults to counting outputs such as placements. EPR's PR measurement gap study, which compiles Prowly's 2024 survey and Muck Rack's 2024 survey, reports that only 19% of practitioners use sales metrics and that 85% of teams report stories placed as a top metric. Both are output-first habits that a baseline-first plan avoids.
How should a PR plan handle a crisis?
A PR plan should include a short contingency section that names the crisis lead, the approval path for statements and the first three audiences to notify. The section links the plan to a separate crisis document instead of replacing it. EPR's crisis PR pillar covers the full discipline, and its guide to crisis communications failure patterns lists the mistakes a contingency section should prevent.
What should you check before approving a PR plan?
Before approving a PR plan, check three links in the chain: every tactic traces to an objective, every objective has a baseline, and every task has a named owner. A plan that fails any one of the three lists activity without accountability. Send the plan back until each tactic points to an objective and each objective points to a number.
EPR's guide to the functions of public relations shows where each tactic belongs in the larger practice.
