Effective Marketing Strategies: Advertising vs Public Relations (PartII)

Effective Marketing Strategy:
Public Relations

Public relations refer to any form of unpaid communication, designed to generate a positive image of a company in the market. It can also be considered as a planned effort by an organization to the establishment of favorable opinion for the organization and its products and services.

Public Relations Tools

•News

•Speeches

•Special Events

•Written Material

•Audiovisual Material

•Corporate Identity Material

•Other (social cause, websites, employees)



 

Public Relations Graph

•Growth phase:
As in the case of advertising, public relations in the growth phase is of utmost importance for the organization and considerable time and effort is deployed for public relations.

•Established and Growing Phase:
It has been observed that most companies do not entail much importance to public relations once the product is past its growth stage. However, PR deals with the image of the organization on the whole and is not limited to a particular product. Hence, ideally, PR should have a graph that doesn't fall below a minimum predefined value. The PR strategy should be attributed a predetermined level of importance throughout the lifetime of an organization, and a spike should be observed with an increase in PR activities when any new product is launched.

Public Relations - Objectives

•Maintaining a rapport with the public

•Generating repeat buyers

•Maintaining long-term relationships with the clients

Secrets for Building Good Public Relations

Most organizations and its managers tend to neglect public relations as an effective marketing strategy. Even when employed, PR often is not a well-planned and well-managed activity. It assumes a very random form and this can hurt the prospects of an organization and its products. The most paramount suggestion when using PR as a marketing strategy is that it should be given its due importance.

•Giving enough importance to PR.

•Planning and organizing PR activities.

•Significant social work or assistance to social causes.

•Introducing every change in top-level management through news and talk-shows.

Advertising vs. Public Relations

Advertising has an extremely wide reach and thus, is one of the most effective tools of marketing. Additionally, its expressive nature enables it to strongly influence the consumer. A total control over how the advertisement will be presented to the end-user is possible. This facilitates better planning and strategizing of the advertising function in an organization. As against this, the quality of the news, the features of the product it highlights, the placement of this news piece when media relations is used for PR, are all beyond the control of an organization. Advertising also allows a control over the place, time, duration, and repetition; contrary to PR.

Advertising, in itself implies paid ways of generating positivity in the market about a product. As against this, PR deals with building long-term relationships and promoting a positive image of the company. PR relates to the unpaid ways of 'being in news'. Thus, the cost incurred for the process of advertising is much higher as compared to that required for building strong public relations. An activity that is a result of public relations like news, gives the product review from the perspective of a third person and also gives a detached comment on the product. Thus, a PR activity is perceived to be more legitimate and believable by the customer.

Both advertising and public relations can be used as tools for branding. It is important to remember that advertising or public relations alone will never comprise of the marketing strategy of an organization for its product. A combination of both is mandatory for effective business marketing and in order to ensure the success of a product.

See Part I of Ketaki's artticle where advertising strategies are discussed.


By Ketaki Borkar
Image by StockSource