What Is PR? Everything to Know About PR in Marketing

If you work in or close to media and communications, Marketing you are surely familiar with the term PR. But if you are new to marketing in general and PR in particular, the term may still feel unfamiliar. Public Relations is truly an indispensable field of marketing communications. In this article, Mona Media will help you understand the concept of what PR is? We also cover PR's important role in marketing, public relations tools and other related information.

What is PR?

PR is short for Public Relations, which in Vietnamese means Quan hệ công chúng (public relations). The term first appeared in 1807, used by Thomas Jefferson (3rd President of the United States, who also wrote the first Declaration of Independence in 1776). So it means: Politics was the first field to apply PR.

• Then, in 1877, PR became a profession, with its foundations laid by Ivy Ledbetter Lee.
• From 1960 to 1970, the growth of mass media strongly supported public relations activities.
• By the end of the 20th century, PR had spread worldwide and was applied in many fields.

Overall, At its core, PR emerged from the work of strengthening and spreading an organization's or business's vision and mission to its employees and the public, in order to build, promote and maintain relationships.

In marketing, public relations is the process of analyzing trends, anticipating developments, building management strategies and communicating information about an individual or organization to the public. What is the purpose of PR? It is to build a brand, create a positive image of the organization in the public's mind and perception, and aim for mutually beneficial relationships.

In recent years, with the strong growth of the internet and international integration, public relations has become one of the hot careers that many people choose.

The role of PR in marketing

Public relations is an indispensable part of communications. The important roles of PR in marketing are listed below:

• A powerful tool for individuals and organizations to build the brand image.
• Support promote a brand imagea brand and promote the organization's or business's products and services to the wider public.
• Helps build and establish public trust and goodwill toward the organization, and resolves misunderstandings, prejudices and unfavorable public opinion about it.
• Helps build good relationships inside the organization and create goodwill in public opinion through community relations activities, and more.
• Shapes a distinct corporate culture through effective PR.
• Strengthens trust and protects reputation so the business operates effectively through PR activities.
• Raising brand value for the business and increases potential customers effectiveness through broad promotion.

Pros and cons of public relations

Although public relations is quite popular and widely used in marketing, it has both advantages and disadvantages.

What are the advantages of PR?

Some notable advantages of public relations:

• It can build higher trust because of the reach of major media programs among customers.
• Investment costs are modest, yet the results can be strong.
• An effective way to reach a target public.
• PR effectively influences customers' awareness and behavior.
• Customers usually accept news more readily than advertising.
• With public relations, you can also build your business's image in customers' eyes.

What are the disadvantages of PR?

Alongside its notable advantages, PR also has the following drawbacks:

• PR messages can lack consistency and coordination.
• PR has little control over the media.
• It is hard to measure how effective public relations activities are.

Who is PR aimed at?

Despite these limitations, PR is still considered an effective communications channel when applied appropriately.

So who is PR usually aimed at?

PR channels usually target two main groups:

1. Circle of Work (audiences outside the company)

This is the the group with a strong impact on the company's operations and the impact on this group is mainly financial. It includes:

• Buyers and consumers who use the products/services directly.
• Shareholders and investors.
• Partners, suppliers, vendors, distributors, etc.

This group interacts frequently with company departments such as the board of directors, marketing and sales. For PR practitioners, close ties between these groups and the company make planning strategy easier and more effective.

2. Circle of Trust (target publics outside the company)

As a the group that publishes and shares your information with the public. This group also gets more attention because it brings useful information that can further strengthen public trust in the company. Specifically:

• Journalists and media outlets social media
• Government agencies and departments.
• Experts, influencers and reputable social organizations, etc.

These groups influence one another. Experts pick up trends from the press, and organizations need experts, etc.

In addition, The Circle of Trust can also influence the Circle of Work, for example expert analysis influencing shareholders and partners, or the press influencing consumers.

Besides external PR audiences, you will also meet an internal PR audience: the company's managers and employees. Internal public relations activities help bind the business together, create a pleasant workplace, and make people work more productively and effectively.

The content of What is PR?

As public relations has developed in Vietnam, PR's work in marketing breaks down into the following specific areas:

• Strategic planning: analyzing the environment and opportunities, setting the goals of the marketing strategy, and analyzing competitors.
• Internal PR: internal public relations are activities that build, establish and maintain good relationships between leaders and employees in the company.
• Media relations: public relations includes the activities and plans that create and maintain relationships with the press.
  
   
• Event organization: the set of tasks needed to run an upcoming program or event, from the first idea to the close. It covers ideation, scriptwriting, and event design and production.
• Managing a media crisis: a business needs to listen to customer opinions and feedback on its platforms, then work with the communications team to handle media crises for the business.
• Community relations: creating positive value that shapes how the community thinks and perceives the organization, through activities such as donating equipment and protecting the environment.

Types of Public Relations

Each company carries out different PR activities depending on its stage and capacity. In this article, MONA Media sorts them out again into 6 types of public relations that correspond to the areas of PR, so you can follow them in detail.

1. Strategic planning

A concrete plan for the goals an organization or business wants to reach, including the methods and resources needed to achieve them. PR practitioners also need to do work such as analysis SWOT and SMART, building a roadmap, defining the steps for each item, assessing risks, proposing solutions and measuring results.

Planning a public relations strategy helps a business:

• Make PR more effective, cutting unnecessary tasks and focusing on the important ones.
• Reduce risks while carrying out PR, and handle problems as they arise, thanks to a detailed plan that anticipates every likely case.
• Allocate budget and resources sensibly.
• And serve as the basis for judging the PR campaign once it has run.

2. Internal PR

Internal public relations targets all of a business's employees. This type of PR acts as a bridge that builds ties and understanding among staff and between the company and its employees.

Internal public relations activities include:

• Making the most of internal communication channels
• Organizing internal events

3. Event organization

The goal of event organization is to attract a large number of participants. Events usually have a certain scale depending on their nature, for example:

• Convention centers
• Hotels
• Stadiums
• School grounds, etc.

Depending on the type of event and its purpose, the organizer or PR team will draw up a specific plan.

4. Media relations

This means building and maintaining relationships with media and press organizations. Through the press, a business can tell the public about its mission and vision, or the meaning of a program or event, in a positive, professional and consistent way.

In addition, users are spending more and more time on social media, so businesses that want to stay ahead of the trend cannot ignore public relations on these channels. A business can use them to run promotional events and minigames to draw attention to a program, or hire KOLs, influencers and bloggers to tell a wide audience about your event.

5. Community relations

An organization or business has many community relationships, such as:

• Clients
• As a trusted
• A leading
• Investors
• The media
• Government authorities
• Social activities, etc.

The business builds different activities for each relationship, with the aim of building good relationships and positive public opinion. This earns the business goodwill, builds a good image in people's minds, and moves it toward its final goal.

Community relations is also expressed through sponsoring contests and events. You will see many programs that list sponsors, which is another way to promote a brand or business widely.

6. Handling media crises

Media is always a double-edged sword. It can take a business to the top, but it can also drag it down. A single crisis that is not handled smartly can damage an entire organization or business and wipe out the reputation it has built up over time.

That is why PR professionals must be careful at every step, in every campaign and in the whole process of building the business's image. In particular, the crisis response team must be tactful and honest, so they can coordinate with leadership and help resolve the crisis quickly and effectively.

-> See also: How to handle a media crisis that works

Tools that support PR

As for what PR tools are, there are many you can use in public relations activities, such as:

• News: One of the main tools for creating news stories that benefit a brand, product or person.
• Speeches: They help many people get to know your products, services or organization quickly. This is a tool managers often use.
• Special events: Special public relations events, such as press conferences, press tours, openings, fireworks, light shows, presentations and educational programs, are also ways to reach the public and draw strong interest.
• Written materials: Written materials can include annual reports, brochures, newsletters, press, company magazines, etc.
• Audiovisual materials: These include slide presentations, online videos, DVDs, etc. They are PR tools that are becoming more and more common.
• A brand identity: Seen as a tool that creates a business's identity and helps the public recognize the brand quickly and accurately. It includes the logo, buildings, stationery, brochures, signage, sales materials, vehicles, uniforms, etc.
• Public service activities: Organized to build a friendly, positive business image in the community and increase public goodwill toward the brand.
• Website: An indispensable tool for modern PR. Websites, blogs, social networks and the like carry useful information and reach many people without limits of space or time.

PR vs. advertising

If they don't yet understand public relations, many people confuse PR with advertising. In fact, they are two quite different concepts and fields.

• PR: a way of building relationships between an organization or business and its customers and community by finding and combining different factors and parties. PR works on the principle of mutual benefit. Common forms include customer support and care, and building brand development strategies through the press, etc.
• Ads: the use of marketing tools such as email marketing, direct calls, press and broadcast media, a TV commercial, etc. to bring products and services closer to customers and speed up buying decisions. Repeated advertising can also get customers into the habit of remembering a brand, helping it spread more widely.

Steps to build an effective PR plan

The content above should have helped you understand what PR is. So what steps lead to an effective public relations plan? You can follow this process:

• Step 1: Define PR goals
• Step 2: Define the target audience of the public relations campaign
• Step 3: Create a strategy for each specific goal to get precise results.
• Step 4: Create tactics for the goal strategy, in other words, how you will use your people and resources to carry out your strategy.
• Step 5: Set a specific budget for each strategy.
• Step 6: Plan how the strategy will be carried out.
• Step 7: Evaluate the goals and results, and review people's feedback and opinions after the campaign, so you can improve the next PR strategies.

Case studies of successful PR campaigns

Many successful public relations campaigns are worth studying and learning from, such as:

1. Google's campaign against Ebola

The 2014 Ebola outbreak seriously affected many countries and took a large number of lives. To help people who wanted to support a positive cause, Google launched a fundraising campaign. It also pledged to give $2 for every $1 donated to the cause through its website.

The campaign drew the attention of the media and helped Google raise more than $7.5 million.

2. Just Eat & A Sick Customer

Just Eat is an online food ordering app that lets customers add comments to their orders, for example to tell the courier the exact address or to leave the order with an acquaintance.

One customer tried her luck and used the note feature to ask the courier to stop on the way and pick up a certain medicine for her. That incident later turned into a PR success for the Just Eat brand.

3. Facebook helps spread word about the Paris tragedy in 2015

The 2015 Paris shootings killed 129 people. Facebook added a French flag filter to its app so users could apply it to their profile pictures (avatars) to show support for France.

This campaign drew millions of users who joined in and was a successful effort by Facebook, with a deeply humane campaign.

Frequently asked questions

1. What does PR stand for?

PR stands for the English phrase “Public Relations”.

2. Why does every business need PR?

PR is building messages and maintaining relationships with the public a business wants to reach. So when a business uses public relations in its operations, it can do a lot for brand growth, and effective PR activities usually keep paying off over a long time.

3. Is there a way to do successful product PR for any business?

To make public relations for a product effective, you can use some of these communication methods:

• Brand storytelling
• Writing PR articles for the press
• Product PR on traditional channels
• Public relations for products through online media
• Holding seminars, workshops and free consultations
• Connecting with celebrities
• Taking part in community activities

4. What are the standards for a PR article?

Make sure your PR article meets the standards below so it is complete and works well for your marketing campaign.

• PR should speak to the community and be easy to share widely
• Be creative and draw plenty of public interest
• Use suitable, thoughtful language
• Provide complete information

Those are some thoughts from Mona Media about the concept of what PR is? And the important roles of PR in marketing. We hope this article has strengthened your knowledge of public relations and helps you plan an effective way to use this form of communication for your business.

If you are unsure how to build and run an effective public relations strategy, MONA Media has a dedicated team to help. Contact us via Hotline 1900 636 648 and we will advise you on a specific PR strategy that suits your industry and field.