Max Rosebert Shoewer Lubin : Impact of public relations on the effectiveness of the company’s marketing activities

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IMPACT OF PUBLIC RELATIONS ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE COMPANY’S MARKETING ACTIVITIES

by Max Rosebert Shoewer LUBIN

Master degree

At South Ural State University

Abstract

The aim of this article is to clarify the role of public relations on the effectiveness of the company’s marketing activities. The view of classical rhetoric has usually been defined public relations as the art of finding all the available means of persuasion in a situation. Public relations share an interest in persuasion which in an attempt to shape, change and reinforce perception, affect as feelings, cognition as thinking, and/or behavior, plays a pivotal role in many public relations activities in the companies[1]. In the public relations context, the inoculation practitioner communicates with publics before they hear some other persuasive message in order to inoculate them against the impact of the coming message. Then, some authors think that the main tools of public relations are based on the socially responsible of the enterprise, they use the word of Socially Responsible Public Relations (SRPR) that is viewed as a corporate social responsibility as example the creation of a foundation by an enterprise[2].  Therefore, the SRPR can be originally a strictly economic doctrine of profit-making for a firm’s shareholders[3]. It evolved into corporate social responsiveness and subsequently into social issues management, issues identification, and respecting the need of community or society. As a construct it includes the affirmation of society’s well-being by organizations in general, not just by corporations.

Keywords : Public relations ; Communication strategies ; Marketing ; Corporate social responsibility ; Management ; Organizational communications ; Competitive environment

Introduction

Companies invest a large part of the marketing and advertising dollars to build and maintain a positive corporate image, which is vital to the competitive status[4]. Some models suggested that the meta-theoretical approach to the conceptualization of the role of the strategist is a synthesis of: social responsibility/ethicalapproach, corporate socialresponsiveness approach, the corporate social performance approach, the stakeholder approach, the issues approach and the corporate communityapproach. Strategy communication implies organizations and their functions are evaluated in terms of economic contribution and manage company’s image goals which can obtain by a good social marketing media strategy impacted by the public relations. Public relations are distinct from marketing in several ways, although their boundaries often overlap. Both disciplines deal with an organization’s environmental relationships and employ similar communication tools to reach the public. Therefore, Wilcox mentioned the lists eight ways in which public relations activities contribute to fulfilling marketing objectives in a company. In this field, the marketing communication has been a key role during the last decades of new economy including dense technological affects, branding, sustainability of brand value, acquiring reputation of a company, potential customer communication and persuasion process for buying/selling. Public relations a key factor an underpinning factor for products and services. Publicity in marketing has only been perceived as an advertisement. Marketing communication plays a significant role in company and brand value to ensure the continuity of the brand’s credibility, the potential customer’s product purchase to be convinced as to achieve the objectives of marketing components. Withal intensive structure of new economy global economic dynamism causes alteration and interaction in public relations and advertisement. Then, the public relations are not only aim to inform the public, it’s one of the tools to influence the public opinion.

  1.  Public relations as a complement to marketing strategies in companies

Within that period of 21st century, diffusion of service marketing and PR’s positioning in marketing communication take an important place. Then, the PR’s positioning in service marketing has been determined including marketing, service marketing and PR correlation. Public relations are the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its public. It’s the key to effective integrated marketing communication in all sectors of business. It is a management function which evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an organization with the public interest, and plans and executes a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance. Public relations are another major mass-promotion tool for building relations with the company’s various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and handling or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories, and events. Therefore, public relations are becoming a collection of techniques performing via press relations or press agency, product publicity, public affairs, lobbying, investor relations, development for gaining financial or volunteer support, used to optimize the relation between a company and the public in the market where it’s working. The public relations make sure that the service organization is playing an active role in this process and can prevent negative rumors circulating about the company or its products/services. There is no doubt to get noted that in a service company, everyone is responsible for public relations. As Kotler and Armstrong concluded, publicity is important, it is cheap, has high coverage and comes from a reliable and independent source. On the other hand, publicity is almost uncontrollable and thus can turn out to be negative[5]. Therefore, the good relations between experienced public relations people and press are necessary in a competitive environment on the market. Then, the cross-channel marketing is supported by public relations. As outlined above, the main objective of marketing today is to build strong relationships with consumers. Collaboration between Marketing and public relations departments must increase in the enterprises. If one of the main goals of the marketing department is to develop a strong influencer marketing strategy, the organization need to be able to identify key influencers who have the ability to connect the brand and consumers. Otherwise, it doesn’t help achieve the larger goal of building a strong relationship with the target audience. The influencers the company chooses must inspire consumers and impact their buying behavior, and cultivating the right partnerships requires marketing and public relations departments to work together. We can say, the evidence-based Marketing Public Relations are involved in many areas of work, such as[3]: (a) Positioning the company as a leader or expert, (b) Building trust (confidence) and consumer loyalty, (c) Introducing new products, (d) Identifying and removing outdated products, (e) Re-launching products, (f) Communicating the benefits of the products, (g) Promoting new methods for using the products that are already known, (h) Building and maintaining a good relationship with people and companies within the producing industry, (i) Reaching secondary markets, (j) Regulating trusts and monopolies in order to protect the market, (k) Expanding the use of advertising, (l) Spreading product news prior to advertising, (m) Creating a communicative advertising, (n) Describing the product in more detail, and many more.

  • Public relations on the effectiveness of the company’s marketing activities

Moreover, the marketing public relations are focus on the strategies that what the enterprise should do in making a decision or what kind of communication tools to use in realization the program. Public relations can be compared to other marketing activities. The public relations have often been left out of the marketing mix due to the lack of measurement tools, which are not industrialized enough. An old challenge that is now taken into account, is to be able to compare public relations actions in order to know the ROI. By using a unified metric that measures the results of all marketing actions, which allows to understand where value is generated. This one give enterprise the key metrics they need to pay attention to, in the form of a detailed report, allowing them to allocate budgets more effectively and make clear decisions for the future with the support of marketing and communication teams. Therefore, the marketing public relations strategies are planning, implementing and evaluating the programs that can stimulate the prospective customer to choose a product. It also can regain the customer satisfaction of prospective customer through the reliable information given and also give positive impression about the products offered which are suitable for their needs, desires, concerns, and interests. To conclude, the idea of organizations adapting to their environments is in keeping with the tenets of systems theory that are so prevalent in public relations practice and research. By the creation of the foundation inside an enterprise makes the corporate communication affective, it is to make the consumer love and understand the brand or to develop and reinforce this image while knowing the values. In this case, we can consider the public relations as the art of adjusting organizations to environments and environments to organizations. The most advanced form of two-way communication involves adjustment on the part of organizations and publics and the organizations must adapt to their environments if they are to increase their effectiveness or even to survive in a competitive environment. This more understated communication allows to promote sales by a better image, to convince and reassure its partners, to promote the benevolence of public authorities, to facilitate the contribution in capital while informing, impressing and challenging the target of the company. Having both an internal and external target, the company’s institutional communication must convince both employees and consumers to share the same values. For this type of communication, the company often uses events, press relations, brochures that present the company, the company newspaper, the website, sponsoring, but also more and more sponsorship, and the company foundation.

Conclusion

Then, we can argue that the objective of a corporate foundation is to increase the value of the company in order to attract clients by investing in their environment and they will often sympathize to the company. Also, the foundation offers legitimacy to the company in a sector where it has not yet proven itself. An American researcher’s study shows that donations increase the company’s reputation capital.  The foundation remains a way for companies to get rid of a negative image because of their sector of activity. The creation of a corporate foundation for these large groups allows them to improve their image and prove their good deed. In this case, the foundation is also a media strategy. The media sometimes talk about corporate foundations on television in newspaper articles or on their websites. The role of public relations on the effectiveness of the company’s marketingis dealing with the identification of organization’s strategic public and developing communications programs for building solid, open and trusting relations with them. Many companies have taken a limited view of the impact that public relations can have on company’s marketing effectiveness. Companies need to understood the obligation to communicate more precisely on their social responsibility, either by real conviction or in a more opportunistic way. Then, the concept of trust among customers has emerged as central to understanding the exchange between two partners. This trust can see as the attribution by the customer of a set of accumulated presumptions about the company in terms of its credibility, integrity and benevolence. The trust is to be at the origin of a stronger commitment with the brand, a necessary condition for greater loyalty. The enterprise effectiveness and related performance are a robust and ongoing necessity for business. Moreover, an even more important issue concerns the ability of public relations to connect effectively with key stakeholders who could impact on organizational performance. Public relations make an organization more effective when it identifies strategic constituencies in the environment and then develops communication programs to build long-term, trusting relationships with them.

Bibliographic list

[1]     “Public Relations and Communication Management: Current Trends and Emerging Topics,” Routledge & CRC Press. https://www.routledge.com/Public-Relations-and-Communication-Management-Current-Trends-and-Emerging/Sriramesh-Zerfass-Kim/p/book/9780415630900 (accessed Dec. 06, 2021).

[2]     M. J. Baker, Corporate marketing: insights and integration drawn from corporate branding corporate identity corporate communication and visual identification. Emerald Group Publishing, 2006.

[3]     P. Kotler, G. Armstrong, V. Wong, and J. Saunders, Principles of Marketing. Pearson Education, 2008.

[4]     R. L. Heath, “Thoughts on Public Relations,” Journal of Public Relations Research, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 93–114, Apr. 2006, doi: 10.1207/s1532754xjprr1802_2.

[5]     K. Rhenald, Public relations management: concept and application. Pustaka Utama Grafiti, 1994. Accessed: Apr. 10, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://lib.ui.ac.id

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