When beginning a public relations campaign, you need to conduct formative research. First, you need to analyze the situation facing your organization and then you need to analyze the organization itself. While analyzing an organization you will look into the internal and external environment, as well as the public perception. The focus of step two should be on what the organization is, does, and aspires to be.
Structure of Organizations
For the most part, all organizations will wall under either a business (for-profit businesses) or a nonprofit (noncommercial organizations). For-profit organizations can range from small enterprises to massive enterprises with millions of employees as well as from local to global corporations. Businesses within these fields can also be categorized as green, women-owned, minority-owned, start-up, home-based, and online.
Noncommercial organizations contain nonprofit organizations, Government organizations, membership associations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). These types of businesses can be categorized by their focus, for example, environmental, political, religious, etc. Noncommercial organizations can also range from community-based to international.
Mission, Vision, & Values
Regardless of the type of organization, it is important to identify the organization's mission, vision, and values. A mission statement is a brief strategic description of the purpose of a business or noncommercial organization. A vision statement is a brief strategic description of what the organization aspires to become. The vision and mission statement are similar in style, but the underlying message should be different. A values statement is a set of beliefs that drive an organization and provide a framework for its decisions.
Communication Audit
A public relations audit or communication audit is also a crucial part in the process of analyzing the organization. This is an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the public relations concerns of an organization. It is advised that audits should be performed every five to seven years and after a crisis.
Situation Analysis
A situation analysis is a planning tool offering research-based assessment of information of all factors, internal and external, that managers use to analyze the environment affecting an organization or client. A situation analysis is also known as a SWOT analysis that highlights the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organization.
Internal Environment
The internal environment consists of an organization's performance, niche, structure, ethical base, and internal impediments. The aspect of an organization’s internal environment focusing on the quality of the goods and services provided by the organization, as well as the viability of the causes and ideas it espouses is the definition of performance. Analyzing the performance can help the company better succeed by reviewing the organization as it was in the past and as it is now. The niche of an organization focuses on the specialty or the unique function or role that makes it different from others. This internal audit also will go over the structure of the organization which provides the purpose or mission of the organization as it relates to the situation at hand. The ethical base of an organization should either be structural to the organization or personal to certain individuals. Finally, there are internal impediments. Internal impediments are any obstacles within the organization that might limit the effectiveness of the public relations program.
Public Perception
Public perception includes visibility and reputation of the organization. Visibility refers to the extent at which the public knows the organization. While researching whether people know about an organization or not and what they know about it, it is also a good time to analyze the presence and effectiveness of different communication channels that the organization uses and the impact it has.
Reputation deals with how. People evaluate the information they have about an organization, focusing on the general, overall, and long-term impression that people have of an organization. The reputation of an organization is arguably the most important public relations asset. It is part of the social capital of an organization and its competitive advantage built mainly through earned media.
External Environment
The external environment includes supporters, competitors, opponents, and external impediments. When analyzing supporters, you are finding groups that currently or will potentially help the organization. Supporters will all have similar interests and values. Competitors are pretty self-explanatory, but you want to really analyze them to see how your organization compares to the rest. You can see what they do that works from them and vice vera to learn and help better your own organization. Opponents are the exact opposite of supporters. Opponents are groups or individuals who are against an organization that can ultimately damage the value of your organization. An advocate, dissident, anti, activist, missionary, zealot, and fanatic are all different types of opponents.
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