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However, there is one key area where marketing professionals and the public relations professionals will bring different qualities to the marketing mix - or, perhaps, more accurately these wiIJ be different facets of the same set of qualities.
Usually marketing professionals will be driven by the need to achieve and continualJy build customer satisfaction. This wiIJ enable them to generate the best possible prices for the product or services.
Generally, marketing skiIJs have less of a role to play in commodity sectors.
Imagine that you are a seasoned marketing person with a responsibility for marketing, perhaps, building sand. It is a commodity and it has its price in the market place which probably varies little. It ends up being used with cement in construction and the finished product (used with one supply of sand or another) will be indistinguishable to anyone except the handful of world building sand experts.
So you can't do much about price - but you can work on distribution, technical advisory service, customer satisfaction, customer relations, loyalty schemes, builders' merchants events, joint promotions with cement makers, contract deals with large customers, plus sponsorship, entertaining, advertising, and public relations to promote aIJ these added extras.
But, as a marketing evangelist, how long before you start trying to develop product differentiation and, even, a little branding? If there were only some way
to make your building sand distinctive from other building sand then, with a ' little branding and the right sort of promotion, a premium price might be obtained in the market ...
And so your marketing instincts come to the fore; you are driving towards customer satisfaction which leads to higher sales and better prices. Of course, many marketing professionals believe there is no better measure of the effectiveness of their work than the sales figures. And they are generally right .
• The development of reputation motivates
communicators
So, marketing people tend to be commercial and profit-driven. Given the choice of long-term or short-term results, many will find the attraction of the shortterm results just too much to resist. Few marketers wiIJ jeopardise short-term benefits for the sake of long-term returns; many wiIJ put the long-term situation in second place on their agenda.
How does that compare with public relations professionals? Theoretically, they are also driven by the goals of customer satisfaction, improved price and II" better profitability. But that may be only the theory. Though they may have learnt the language and can mimic the motivations of their coIJeagues in marketing, few of them are ultimately really driven by this key profit dimen- i sion. They may know that they are expected to be concerned about sales, costs !
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and margins but, unless it is a requirement of the job, they will soon lose '
interest in such areas and focus more attention on the one thing that really does motivate them - goodwill. This is not universally so, but is too often true to risk ignoring such motivations.
For whilst even the most uncommercial public relations person will concede that profitability is important (and that public relations can make a major contribution in this area), it is not usually what gives them a buzz. They want people to respect the organisation. Some may be prepared to fight to get management to change policies to those that are more likely to win regard. Admiration and respect are often higher up their agenda than sales and performance. They want the best company reputation that they can achieve for many will feel that this is much more what their work is about than anything that appears on the bottom line. It is not uncommon for a public relations practitioner not to know the turnover and profits of his company or client.
Of course, if they are even moderately disciplined, then they will want this reputation to be at its highest levels amongst those publics that the organisation depends upon for its success - such as, customers, employees, legislators, factory neighbours, shareholders and so on .
• Focus the public relations personnel on the
- objectives
To get the best out of public relations people, the marketers need to keep them firmly focused on the marketing objectives. This cannot be repeated too oftennor can the public relations results be checked against the original objectives too often. If public relations professionals are invited and constantly encouraged to work within this framework, they are more likely to deliver the performance.
On the other hand, for public relations professionals to get the best out of the marketing team, they will need to keep repeating that they have responsibility to address a broader audience than those JUSt directly impacted by the marketing. Typically, they may have responsibilities for employees, for the community within which the company operates, local and national legislators, shareholders and city analysts, plus many others.
It may be part of their job to warn marketing colleagues about any proposed marketing initiatives which might be damaging to the reputation of the company. As an illustration, some years ago, a member of Philips marketing department proposed a promotion for a business system that was built around a gambling theme: a free set of poker dice for business enquirers was one of the incentives.
At a planning meeting, the public relations person asked whether a proportion of the market might feel uncomfortable about gambling. If national