What is Public relations in Marketing? 6 methods to learn public relations.
Dealing with consumers and maintaining healthy public relations with them is one of the most important part of marketing. When a seller sold the product to the public, but was very aggressive and impatient during selling, public will not end up going back to that shop, which is not a good signal for the organization.
Sellers should engage their customers in such a way that they will feel satisfied after the purchase and would build their trust on the particular company.
This will increase the chances of customer retention and would benefit the organization in a productive manner.
Public relations is basically a broad concept or study of how to maintain healthy relations with public to benefit both customers and organization at the same time.
Firstly we’ll look at two of the definitions given by the authors to best describe the term public relations in marketing.
1. This definition is given by “ MARLA AARON “
“ Public relations is communicating your organization’s messages at the right time, in the right place to the right audience with the proliferation of tools and technologies, we can measure the value of those efforts and how they align with business overall mission.”
2. This definition is given by “ BRIAN KELLY “
“ Public relations, once called “non-paid” media is the element of marketing communication mix where a marketer creates messages and supplies them to publishers for distribution. The result is content contained within a third party channel providing an air of authenticity."
Additionally, public relation is the interactions with the media to ensure the intent of the marketers message is maintained.
Meaning of Public relations in marketing
Public relations can be widely described as the study to help the organizations grow to the maximum heights by maintaining relations with its potential public or customers.
Maintaining public relations has 3 basic parameters:
1. Pre- marketing relations
2. On-marketing relations
3. Post- marketing relations
PRE- MARKETING RELATIONS – This parameter is mainly focused before the customer makes any purchase. When a customer arrives at a shop and discusses its need with the seller, made different preferences, ask for various alternatives and communicate with the seller about the product they want to purchase. On the other hand the seller also tries to build healthy relations with the customer by showing multiple products similar to the need of the customer.
ON- MARKETING RELATIONS – This parameter is mainly focused during the purchase. If the customer feels satisfied with the product and the service given by seller, then the customer will make the purchase from the shop and recommend it to some of their relatives, friends, family etc.
POST- MARKETING RELATIONS – This parameter is mainly focused after the purchase. Many companies or shops do not focus on the after- sales services and building trust and loyalty of the customer.
This is one of the most considerable parameter that needs to be focused.
Organizations can take survey or provide some discounts or gifts for building healthy relations with the customers. Maintaining healthy relations means enhancing trust and more trust will help in customer retention that will result in two things 1) Happy customer 2) Maximizing profits of the firm.
6 simple and basic methods to groom and learn public relations:
1. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING – Social media is a platform having billions of users. The most popular platform amongst the youth and as we believe that “youth is the future”, this platform will attain a huge hike in the future as well.
Working on this platform will be somehow easy for the organization to deal with the public.
Posting various content, enhancing the branding of their product and much more can be done on social media platforms to engage more audience with the company.
2. CONDUCT EVENTS – The public who is engaged on social media can show their interest or trust on social media platforms, but there are many people who use these platforms for work purpose or in their idle time, so to reach those customers would be a challenge for social media.
In this case, the company can conduct events or small inauguration functions for the launch of any new product or about any announcements of the company.
Employees who are involved in public relations can connect with various marketers and contact them for the invitation for more engagement.
3.
ADVERTISING
– Advertising is the method used since a long time. In my opinion, it is
one of the most important method which can never be replaced as it is being
used traditionally and till now is opted by most of the companies.
We see many ads during watching TV shows, while reading newspapers, flipping magazines, even on social media platforms like You tube etc. It is a method by which we can reach to the potential customer as when public saw such ads, they can either related the product with their needs or they like the product so much that they want to buy that product to try once. In both the scenario, the company will engage with the customers and can build relations with them to hold the customer.
4. PITCH POTENTIAL CLIENTS – Now, this is the step of public relation where the actual relation building starts. By the use of advertisements we can attract the customers, but to generate leads out of it, we need to pitch to the client.
If an employee or a sales man will not talk to the customer or tell them the pros and cons of the product, or any other better alternative of the product and suggest them the best which could satisfy the customer, there is no use of advertisement.
Employees should be trained and provide expertise to pitch the clients for generation of leads. This will not only generate leads but can build a relation with a customer and can strengthen the trust factor between both client and company.
5.
READ
NEWSLETTERS AND DO MARKET RESEARCH – Reading newsletters regularly can make
us more confident with our work and will help to understand how the market is
going.
People always loves to buy the products which are in trend, and to collect those trendy products it is really important to know out market very briefly so that we can eliminate the outdated products an d can switch to the products which are most liked by the public.
While doing market research it is not only 1 factor to work on i.e. trend but there are many more factors on which we can focus on like the demographics, culture, sex, age groups, interests etc.
Working on these factors individually have its own significance and can help us in building good pitches to the customers and hence can construct seamless public relations.
6. BUILD REPORTS AND HANDLE ANALYTICS OF CLIENTS – Public relations cannot be build by just giving a good pitch once to a client and then say “good bye” to that client.
A good employer can always make a separate report of the customers on monthly or weekly basis, can record the feedbacks of the clients, and can work on it to maintain stability among the customers.
For every company stability is always a major concern because profits and loss is all part of a business but to make the company stable and hold the loyal customers is very difficult part for the employees.
By making regular reports and work on the analytics of the clients can groom the stability of the company as the company can work on its strengths and weakness and can catch the opportunities and protect themselves from the threats prevailing in the market.
These are the 6 main highlights of the article that can help a reader to learn public relations in just 6 easy methods and can start working on these methods and can see the difference.
Apart from these methods you can also go for INFLUENCER MARKETING where you can target some social media influencers and can use their public to promote your products for public relations
OR
RUNNING CAMPAIGNS online or offline can also work for building public relations as you can run a campaign on your face book page or any other platform where you can tell your public about the launch of any new product or any other important message.
OR
MEETING JOURNALISTS AND ATTENDING SEMINARS AND MEDIA CONFERENCES can help you to know what is prevailing in the market. You can link up with many journalists and expand your reach that can initially help you in maintaining good relations with the public.