Marketing and Public Relations

Marketing and Public Relations

Public Relations

Noun:

1.       The professional maintenance of a favourable public image by an organization or a famous person. The state of the relationship between the public and a company or other organisation or a famous person.

Marketing

Noun:

1.       The action or business of promoting and selling products or services.

All business, charities and organisations rely on a public relations team and a marketing team. Both public relations and marketing and incredibly important in gaining any form of success or decent reputation. They are what can make and break a company. The teams do all the work not necessarily seen in the public eye and are made to think thoroughly before any actions are made. I am now going to outline the functions of marketing and public relations and how and why that is carried out in organisations such as North Warwickshire and Hinckley College (NWHC). NWHC is a college with two campuses, one in Nuneaton which has courses such as Beauty Therapy, Mechanics and ICT. The other campus is in Hinckley which is an arts college, with courses such as Journalism, Music Performance and Dance. Although already a well-established organisation, it still relies heavily on PR and marketing, particularly during the current economic climate and the opening of the new Hinckley campus.

Marketing is the action or business or promoting and selling products or services. This is necessary for an organisation to do as without it there would be no profit and essentially, no one would know about it. There are different stages in which marketing teams operate. The first is the strategic planning stage, it is necessary to find out who the target audience is and then anticipating who wants it, in the words of Susanne Davies, marketing manager for NWHC, “you need to know what they want, before they want it.” The next thing to do is satisfy audience expectations whilst knowing the audiences likes and dislikes. Those in the marketing industry need to know how an audience want to use a product or service, when they want to use it, how they want to use it and so on. Marketing officers need to know everything about the audience and how to portray the service or product they’re providing and what format is wanted to the target audience.

There are several different ways that a marketing officer works including direct marketing, publications and websites, social media, recruitment events, annual reports, strategic plans and competitor analysis. Direct marketing involves text messages, e-mails and letters. This helps the market officer directly contact an audience which makes it more personal and can contain a lot of important and necessary information. It is also very rare these days that a person wouldn’t have access to an email account or doesn’t own a mobile phone so it is more cost effective and easier to contact people directly.  Publications, websites and social media all come hand in hand. These are all ways of easily broadcasting a message whether it be about an event, a product or recruitment at once. They can also reach an audience that they wouldn’t normally target so it can bring in a wider range of attention. Recruitment events are also a useful way of reaching out to an audience for a marketing employee, it helps them use personal techniques so they can talk to an audience member one and one and really sell a product. Annual reports and strategic plans don’t go to an audience directly but helps a marketing team together to realize aims, targets and achievements which can bring a team together and help focus. This is similar to competitor analysis. In reviewing how competitors are doing and the way they’re reaching their audience and the feedback they’re getting helps a marketing team review on how the business or organisation they’re working for is doing and possible changes they can make to up the game and get better results than competitors, as it is always a marketers aim to have their organisation at the top of the industry and the best it can be.

Davies has been working for NWHC since 2008 and has had 10 years experience prior to working at the college which makes her more than competent of taking on the role of marketing manager. She studied a public relations and marketing degree and university and worked in the private sector before embarking on the management role at NWHC. Her marketing team consists of two marketing coordinators, a marketing assistant, a graphics designer, herself and the college looking to recruit a junior designer onto the team.

The team works effectively together using the afore mentioned techniques to promote the college. They hold around one college per month to keep the college fresh and relevant, keeping it in the public eye, and also hold recruitment days for young, prospective college students at local schools. As well as this, they control some aspects of the college prospectus which goes out to anyone interesting in studying with NWHC.

However, it’s not easy work. As hard as it is trying to recruit people to study at the college, they have to acknowledge competitors and keep advancing. Davies said “The market place is so competitive, last September 3 colleges opened on our patch so we have to be more aggressive with our approach.” She went on to say “Warwickshire College and Stevenson College are now operating on our patch and we have to respond to that.”

Competition with other colleges isn’t to only trouble that the marketing team faces, over the past year they’ve had to deal with the loss of EMA, transportation issues from campus to campus as well as a lack of resources. Speaking on behalf of the marketing team, Davis said “We don’t have an endless pot of money; in an ideal world we could have more resources.”

Current goals of the marketing team are; maximizing, strengthening recruitment through marketing campaigns and to support college growth geographically, evaluation of the college brand and launching a new brand, to improve the learner experience by celebrating success, creation of a new college website and a continuing goal, “to acknowledge that the learner is at the heart of everything we do”.

Marketing and public relations work hand in hand yet are two different disciplines.

Rowena Knight is head of public relations at North Warwickshire and Hinckley College and said “PR is about reputation” which accurately sums up her role, to maintain a positive and respected reputation for the college. The current PR industry is thriving, with the job rate hiring more than any management function of the last 15 years. The UK PR industry is the more developed in Europe and is growing faster than advertising. Rowena got on the job training and said “no two days are the same.” PR includes working with colleges and partner schools, planning a PR programme and gather knowledge about the sector and organisations.

Each year, there is an annual PR plan made which includes objectives, target audience, key messages, tactics, timings, budgets and evaluation. Although not necessarily seen, there is a lot of hard work that goes into PR. For the organisation, the PR has the responsibility to creates press releases, articles, features, case studies, letters, speeches and any online copy. Not only is it a significant amount of work to do, Knight also has to do it in strict keeping with what she’s told, to maintain the college reputation and make sure it is the establishments views and opinions in any work produced rather than her own.

Another important part of PR is media relations. A PR has to be proactive and reactive as well as developing and maintaining a good working environment and relationship with local press and business to network effectively.  Knight said “it is important to communicate with the media.” Whilst having to deal with work externally such as phone calls and press conferences she also has a lot of internal work that she has to deal with as well, such as meetings with the principal, staff briefings, award ceremonies and international visits and guest lecturers attending the college such as Ben de Lisi.

Marketing is all about promoting the college in new, original, exciting and creative ways yet marketing varies greatly in different industries as marketing techniques for a supermarket would involve entirely different techniques as to that of a college. PR, although obviously differing through different industries, remain the same with trying to keep a good reputation and reflecting the establishments or organisations opinion in a formal and very uniform style. Both are incredibly important for any business to have any form of success.