PR MARKETING

The result of what you do, how you go about doing it, what you say and what others think and say about you is Public Relations, it is all about reputation.
‘Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.’

‘Publics’ is any bodies the company come into contact with outside of the organisation. ‘Relations’ is a ‘significant association between or among things; a connection’.

PR takes form in many different forms with differing companies using it in dissimilar ways for a multiple of reasons. The following titles are recognized under the heading of PR; including public information, investor relations, public affairs, corporate communication, marketing or customer relations. The Public Relations team of any company should strive to have the ‘story’ of the company made known by its public. Via investigation and feedback from customers, the PR team of the company will need to evaluate the feedback, discover what negatives or problems or concerns they have and report them to the management of the company, often with a suggested solution into solving these issues.

PR often has an impact on the success of any business, as PR is a feature of most companies marketing mix. From targeting an audience through different and more targeted channels PR can educate the target audience.
Purposely, PR is a one off form of marketing in terms of supposed integrity. The media coverage it generates is seen as self-governing and the communications conveyed are therefore viewed as being largely free of the negativity that is frequently connected with marketing communications. This is equally significant for both positive and negative PR.

There are a few likely objective behind PR such as to Promote understanding of the company or its products, to help confirm the publics perception of the company, to encourage belief and support and loyalty of the company, the PR may be in place to make unknowing potential consumers, aware of the company or product. PR may also try to dispel negative public opinions of the company and prejudice towards them or it may try to clear up a misunderstanding that the company has been involved in.

There are 9 categories that fall under the Public Relations title, these are;
Publicity –news articles that are often positive
Media management – this is the association with reporters
Corporate image – trying to advertise the company as a positive image in itself
Research and counselling – feedback, monitoring and evaluation of research
Internal marketing – helping to ensure there is a happy work environment for the staff and keeping them on side.
Shareholder relations – shareholders and stakeholders –financial reports must be carried out and publicised to the relevant stakeholders
Lobbying – arrangements with Government
Crisis management – having a ‘back-up’ plan and damage control planned is vital
Community relations – keeping the local community happy and on side with the company.

The PR marketing will normally happen before, throughout and after the event takes place. There will usually be a pre-event press release, the event itself is a form of PR and often a post-event press release will take place stating the success of the event.

Press Release
This must be supported by robust media relationships – the journalists ought to be on your side, helping you to promote the event.
The PR story must be newsworthy - the people need to be interested in a topic in order to read about it.
The story should not be advertising.
The public story must fit the editorial style of the newspaper or magazine, for example, one would not invite a journalist for a specialist Mountain biking to the launch of a fashion week.