PR and marketing – common goal, different paths to success
PR and marketing – two intertwined concepts that nonetheless have many distinct characteristics. They're like a race and a podium finish. Public relations portrays the company as the winner (or some other image desired at a given moment), while marketing shows it how to allocate its strengths during the race.
Public relations are well-thought-out, planned and long-term activities aimed at maintaining relationships with the immediate and distant environment, which in the long term lead to acquiring the largest possible number of clients, supporters and ambassadors.
Public relations activities are always coordinated with the company's strategic plans.
Public relations activities involve maintaining a constant exchange of information with the environment in order to influence its attitude towards the organization.
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These types of image-building activities are divided into medium-term goals covering 1-3 years and long-term goals planned for 3-5 years.
Public relations – from image to crisis management
Public relations strategies involve the parallel implementation of two types of programs:
- image-related, strategic, covering multi-year periods;
- current, focusing on solving the company's problems (e.g. product failures, accusations of improper production process, environmental pollution, etc.).
Strategic goals are directly related to shaping the company's image, relations with its external environment, and the company's challenges. These goals are intertwined, and priority is given to those that address existing problems. Strategic public relations aims to:
- modeling the planned image of the company and shaping a positive perception of the company and its goals and values;
- trust and support for the organization (achieving, maintaining, strengthening, and regaining it if lost);
- the organization meeting the expectations of its environment towards it (sometimes toning down these expectations to a realistic level that is achievable);
- working on relationships between the company and its stakeholders – reducing conflicts, reaching compromises, maintaining win-win relationships;
- strengthening the organization's position in the perception of the environment;
- social acceptance of the organization's activities – achieving, maintaining, recovering in critical cases).
Marketing from identifying needs to selling the product
Marketing is a broader concept than public relations . It encompasses all social processes aimed at recognizing, stimulating, shaping, and satisfying customer needs.
Its primary task is to sell appropriate products to specifically identified people, at the right place and time, at the right price, using optimal promotions for a given sales channel.
The best companies also know how to create a need in the customer. The customer may have never felt the need for such a product before, because it didn't exist or wasn't widely available.
Marketing is the result of the activities of enterprises in a market economy environment – in order to achieve the best possible results and market position, enterprises must optimize their activities on all levels and across many advertising channels simultaneously.
Functional marketing focuses on optimizing the company's operations by:
- analysis of the environment, carried out e.g. by marketing research, analyzes all external factors that have a potential impact on both the possibility of achieving success and failure;
- consumer research in the field of analysis of customer preferences, assessment of their potential and the manner and motivation of making purchasing decisions, leading to better meeting of customer expectations by the company's products;
- planning and developing a product that is designed to meet customer expectations as fully as possible (or ideally, to exceed their expectations by generating new consumer needs that a specific brand’s product can satisfy);
- distribution in the broad sense – managing distribution channels for specific product groups and separating wholesale and retail markets for product sales;
- promotion and advertising – preparation and implementation of advertising campaigns, using advertising instruments appropriate for a given product;
- implementing an appropriate pricing policy – attractive for the customer, profitable for the company, competitive on the market;
- social responsibility – one of the latest implemented marketing elements, emphasizing the company’s conscious and responsible actions in the production, distribution, sale and withdrawal of used products, e.g. testing and certifying products in terms of safety for the user, but also for the natural environment.
Marketing as an institutional concept is associated primarily with:
- people carrying out the functional side of marketing – practically all employees of the organization who have an influence on the production, development and sale of the product;
- Marketing processes are also carried out by external companies, such as:
- market research agencies commissioned to conduct specialized research and analysis of results for the company;
- advertising agencies designing and implementing advertising campaigns for products and services offered by the company – e.g. Verseo;
- consulting companies analyzing the company's position on the market, its development opportunities and indications for further market positioning.
Marketing from a purely objective perspective is most often based on the marketing mix model. This model relies on a group of elements controlled by the company through which the company can influence the market.
Currently, the most commonly used marketing mix model is the so-called 7P model (optionally 4P or 8P depending on the industry) which includes:
- product (Product) – the volume of products offered, their parameters such as: quality, features, packaging, size, brand name, as well as after-sales service (warranty and possibility of returns);
- Price – the price, potential discounts and rebates, as well as the terms and conditions of payment provided by the company;
- Place – distribution channels, types of transport, stock levels and inventories;
- promotion (Promotion) – promotion of sales or services, types of advertising, public relations activities and their mutual interaction in such a way that they strengthen their effect on the company;
- employees (people) – encouraging people to buy the product by using appropriate sales techniques;
- service provision process - customer interest in the offered product, distribution of information about the product, its sale and after-sales service;
- physical evidence - i.e. creating a positive image of the company in order to evoke positive feelings in the customer.
Marketing, therefore, is a series of activities directed both internally and externally within an organization. Marketing activities have a real impact on the company's operations, its market position, and the products it offers and their positioning.
PR and marketing – summary
Public relations is just one element of marketing, focused on presenting both the company and its products in the best possible light. Its primary task is to maintain the best possible corporate image and positive customer and stakeholder attitudes – but without any real impact on the product itself.
Public relations is the company's vision for the outside world, a picture of how the company wants to be perceived and what it strives for. The image created by public relations always differs, to a greater or lesser extent, from the company's actual state, presenting its better side.
Marketing is tasked with finding actual solutions – not always the most beautiful or desirable ones, but ones that bring real, measurable results for the company in the form of reducing losses and returning to the expected level of profitability.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- PR and marketing are complementary fields in which PR focuses on building a lasting image and relationships with the environment in line with the company's strategy.
- The PR strategy includes long-term image creation and ongoing crisis management in order to build trust and positive relationships with the environment.
- Marketing is a comprehensive process of identifying and meeting consumer needs through product development, optimizing pricing and distribution strategies, and effective promotion that leads to sales.
- While PR focuses on creating an ideal image and relationships with the environment, marketing focuses on implementing specific solutions that bring real profits to the company.
