Public relations are generally meant for building and maintaining the image and reputation of the company, organization or individual in the eyes of the clients or public. It is the practice of protecting and enhancing the reputation of the organization in front of the public to increase the business. The public relations have become the demand of the hour. Nowadays, it is essential to communicate effectively with the target audience. The correct flow of information is required because this is the only way of achieving the client’s satisfaction. Moreover, public relations are also used for the marketing process.
Objectives of the Public Relations
The main objective of the public relation is to creating awareness among the public or clients about the company or organization and about the goals, products and services provided by the company. The public relations are used for creating a bond of trust between the organization and the clients. In times of rumors, misinformation etc. the company has to establish the truth for their own betterment in the market. Also, public relations help to earn the recognition to the company. The main motive is to win the hearts of the clients.
Types of Public Relations
There are almost seven types of public relations and all these types have their own importance as discussed below:
- Government Relations: The main role is to make long-lasting co-operation between business and governance. The government relations for companies are systematic effort to influence the policies of government to help achieve particular objectives or protect the particular interest in public that reflects well on the company and the decision makers involved. The two functions are often referred to as same, but there are very minor differences. The government relations is the branch of public relations that helps an organization to communicate with governmental publics whereas the public affair is the type of public relations that helps an organization interact with the government, legislators, interest groups, and the media. In this, the organization is representing the brand to the government with regard to the fulfilment of policies like fair competition, corporate social responsibility, employee protection, consumer protection, etc.
- Media Relations: The media relations is a part of public relations limited to the company’s interaction with journalists, bloggers, editors, reporters and others in the media business. These relations with the media help the organization to convey their message to the audience about what they want to explain and if presented in a good manner in front of the public and will achieve the desired trust of the targeted audience. Maintaining good media relations is the key to better public relations especially for the startups. The organizations who just started their businesses should not compromise on that and be accurate, be timely, be accessible, be informative, be honest, be passionate about the business. The press articles talking about a company’s products or services in a positive light, they provide credibility to that company. All this can be done by maintaining the media relations which emphasize the importance of retaining certain control when it comes to a company’s contact with the media. This results in small businesses maintaining long-term relationships with the media professionals so that they are able to get advantages in the future.
- Investor Relations: The term investor relations describes the department of a company which devoted to handling the inquiries from the investors and the shareholders, as well as from the others who might be interested in the company's stock or financial stability. Also, it is devoted to controlling the positioning of the company, its strategy and its investment proposition. Unlike other parts of public relation driven-departments, investor relations departments are required to be integrated with a company's accounting department, legal department and executive management team. The main role of the IR department is to interact with the investment analysts who provide public opinion on the company as an investment opportunity. These opinions influence the overall investment community, and it is the IR department's job to manage these expectations of the analysts.
- Community Relations: The community relations refer to the various methods used by the organizations to establish and maintain a mutually beneficial relationship with the communities in which they operate. The main principle of CR is that when an organization understands and accepts the responsibility and show the keen interest in the well-being of the community in which it is located. This results in the long-term benefit for the company in the terms of community support, loyalty and goodwill. The company is recognized by the good reputation only when it supports the programs that improve the quality of the life in their community and various other programs like crime prevention, recycle and restoration etc.
- Internal Relations: There is a general saying that ‘Family comes first’. The same thing is here in the internal relations. Internal PR should be an important part of any organization's communication strategy. Internal relations refer to the communication between the company’s members or parts of the organization. It takes place across all levels and organizational units of a company. The main objective of the IR is to encourage the cooperation, empowerment and teamwork among the employees of the organization. This process is important for the young employees because they want to be employed by companies that focus on their employee’s needs. Well-built internal relations have a great contribution to the success of the organization. Instances of internal relations include employee e-newsletters, company intranet websites and interactive social media pages for the employees of the company.
- Customer Relations: Customer Relations is a strategy for managing the company’s communications with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes basically sales activities, but also for the marketing, customer service, and technical support. The main objectives are to find new clients and retain the existing ones, also bring back former clients back into the fold and reduce the costs of marketing and customer service. Making relations with customers helps in growth of business with the support of new clients and existing clients and maintaining them for a long run. In short, customer relations become an organization’s most valuable asset in today’s market. It gives exactly what a company wants to position them for the success.
- Marketing Communications: Marketing communication is a fundamental and complex part of a company’s marketing efforts. Marketing Communication can be described as all the interactions and media you deploy to communicate with the market. Marketing communication has two main goals. First one is to create and sustain the demand and the preference for the product. The other one is to shorten the sales cycle. Creating preference is a longer-term effort that aims at using communication tools to help position your product or company in the minds of the target customer whereas shortening the sales cycle means assisting your sales and channel partners in their efforts to identify, engage and deliver a customer. Understanding the customer’s buying process brings critical insight into how one can shorten the sales cycle.
Examples of Public Relations
Below are some examples of the building public relations by some organization to enhance their company’s reputation among the public:
- Google’s Fight Ebola Campaign: In 2014, the Ebola virus spread in many countries and took many lives, at that time, Google started a donation campaign where it pledged to give $2 for every $1 donated to the cause through its website. This public relations strategy attracted the media attention and resulted to be a huge success as Google raised $7.5 million.
- Paramount Pictures ‘The Ring Publicity Stunt’: The Paramount Pictures to promote its new horror franchise, The Ring, and to get more user attention, took a step forward and planned a publicity stunt where the protagonist haunted the people in a real-life scenario. The film’s most iconic scene of Samara crawling out of the TV set was recreated in a TV showroom where the protagonist came crawling out of the hidden compartment behind a TV screen and scared people. The stunt went viral and the video received over 10 million views on Facebook.
- Facebook Paris Support Profile Pictures: In 2015, in Paris, there was a tragic shooting where at least 129 people died. In response to that incident, Facebook added a France flag filter which the users could apply to their profile pictures to support France. Millions of people applied this filter and also appreciated the effort made by Facebook.
Advantages of the Public Relations
There are some of the merits of the public relations as listed below:
- Credibility: It is a fact that the public gives more attention to the message coming from the third party instead of the self-advertised contents.
- Reach: A good public relations strategy can attract many news agencies, exposing the content to a large audience.
- Cost-effectiveness: The Public Relations is a cost-effective technique to reach the large audience as compared to paid promotion.
Disadvantages of Public Relations
There are some of the demerits of the public relations as listed below:
- No Direct Control: There is no direct control over the content distributed through the earned media, unlike paid media. This is the biggest drawback of investing in public relations.
- Hard To Measure Success: It is really hard to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of a PR campaign.
- No Guaranteed Results: The publishing of a press release is not guaranteed as the brand does not pay for it. The media outlet publishes it only if it feels that it will attract their target audience.
Importance of Public Relations
Around 63% of companies of the total companies dependent on their public image. Public relations have become very important for the organizations for the following reasons:
- Builds up the Brand Image: The brand image gets a boost when the public gets to know about it from the third-party media source. A good public relations strategy help the brands to build up their image in a way they want to.
- Opportunistic: The public relations strategies make the brand capitalize on the opportunities. As discussed above how Google was in the news for donating to Ebola, also how Facebook promoted the LGBTQ rights etc. These opportunities even attract many influencers to share the brand story with their followers.
- Promote Brand Values: The public relation is used to convey the positive messages which are in line with the brand’s value and its image. This boost up the company’s reputation.
- Strengthen Community Relations: The public relation techniques are used to tell the public that the company is as much part of the society as the people. This builds up a strong relationship of the organization with the audience.
