Understanding Public Relations

Understanding Public Relations (Young Marketers Publicity Series)

Public Relations, or PR, is a powerful tool that can make a vital contribution to your success. Learn to distinguish between effective PR and cheap publicity gimmicks in order to build a solid, respected reputation with your key audiences.

Understanding the basics

Public relations describe the way issues and messages are communicated between an organisation and the public. It is the discipline that looks after the corporate reputation. The aim of PR is to win understanding and support from, and to influence the opinions and behavior of, an organization’s or your key audiences. This is achieved through a planned, sustained set of activities. 

Building reputation 

The true purpose of PR is to create a well-deserved reputation. That may involve offering excellent customer care, communicating effectively with your audiences, and showing social responsibility towards the local community and environment. 

Identifying your target audience

Essentially, you need to know who you want to talk to. In most cases, you will have several audiences or ‘publics’, so a strategic approach to PR involves clearly identifying all of them. Some will be regarded as more important than others. Audiences might include:

Customers;

Staff;

Media;

Public;

Investors/shareholders;

Market analysis;

Local community;

Government

In most cases, if your main objective is to get publicity, then communicating with the media and public is of paramount importance.