You hired the help, sent the press releases, maybe even landed a few stories. A year later, though, the honest verdict around the table is that PR didn't really move the needle.
Most of the time, that disappointment traces back to a single gap: nobody set clear PR priorities tied to real business goals. When your PR priorities aren't decided up front, the work drifts toward whatever feels urgent, and the results never add up to anything you can point to.
PR does, indeed, "work" when it is pointed at something specific. Setting PR priorities that connect to business goals, and getting the people who send "hey - can you XYZ real quick?" requests to agree on them, is what turns scattered effort into real results. Without that shared agreement, even a smart plan loses to the next urgent ask.
This article walks through how to set PR priorities, tie them to your goals, and get leadership behind them so they actually hold.
Why does PR stop working for so many organizations?
Usually because no one decided what PR was supposed to accomplish. Without priorities tied to business goals, effort scatters across one-off requests, and the program never builds the momentum that produces results.
Think about what happens with no clear target. A request comes in from a board member, another from a program lead, a third from the CEO, and each one feels reasonable in the moment. You say yes to most of them, and your calendar fills with activity that never ladders up to anything.
This is more common than it looks. In Muck Rack's State of PR Measurement report, connecting PR outcomes to business goals ranked as the field's biggest challenge, even though most communicators say they try to link the two. When that connection stays fuzzy, leadership quietly concludes that PR doesn't work - when really, it was never aimed at anything.
The fix starts before anything else. Before any pitching or posting, you need a real PR strategy that says what the work is for and intended to accomplish.
How do you set PR priorities that tie to business goals?
Start with your current business goals, then work backward. Your PR priorities are the two or three goals PR exists to support, and everything else waits.
Name the outcomes first. Maybe you need to attract new clients or funders, shift public opinion on an issue, or grow awareness with a specific audience you're trying to reach. Pick the two or three that matter most right now, because more than that puts you right back to chasing after each random request that lands in your inbox.
From there, your PR priorities become a filter. A request earns a yes when it supports one of those goals, and it waits when it doesn't. The Barcelona Principles, the PR industry's measurement standard, open with exactly this idea: setting measurable goals is the prerequisite for everything that follows.
If you want a simple structure for turning goals into a plan, the Coverage, Credibility, and Content framework breaks PR into three kinds of work - earned media, executive visibility, and owned content - so you can match each priority to the right one.
How do you get leadership to buy into your PR priorities?
Set the priorities with leadership, not for them. When the people who send requests help name the goals, they are far less likely to undercut the plan three weeks later.
This is the step most teams skip, and it's the one that makes everything else hold. A plan only you know about doesn't stand a chance against a CEO or board member who never agreed to it. So bring them into the conversation early, while the priorities are still being shaped. When leadership hasn't bought into the priorities, every request turns into a fresh negotiation.
At Orapin, this is consistently where things turn for mission-driven teams: once leadership helps set the PR priorities, the second-guessing drops and the comms lead stops carrying every call alone.
What do you do when a request doesn't fit the plan?
Treat it as a trade-off, not a yes or no. Off-plan requests will keep coming, and that's normal. The skill is responding without relitigating your whole plan each time. Instead of a flat no, reframe the ask: "We can absolutely look at that. Which of our goals does it serve, and what should it bump to make room?"
That one move does two things. It keeps you out of the gatekeeper role, and it hands the trade-off back to the person who has shared ownership of the priorities. Nine times out of ten, naming the cost is enough for the request to sort itself out.
It also helps to keep a few strong angles ready - a simple story library means that when a request does fit, you are choosing from what you already have instead of scrambling.
How do you keep the plan on track?
Document the priorities and save them where everyone can see them. A shared, visible plan turns your priorities from a private opinion into a reference the whole team agreed to.
Then revisit it regularly. Goals shift over the course of a year, and your PR priorities should shift with them on purpose, rather than by drift. A quick check-in each quarter keeps the plan honest and gives leadership a natural moment to weigh in.
Done consistently, this is what separates ad hoc PR efforts that run you from a PR strategy you actually run.
The bottom line
None of this makes the requests stop coming. What changes is how you handle them. When your PR priorities are clear, shared, and tied to real goals, a "not right now" carries the weight of a decision everyone made together - and PR finally builds toward something meaningful instead of scattershot and tied to nothing.