Understanding the Functions of Marketing and PR

Use this work book to help you explain the functions of marketing and public relations. You should ensure you use additional examples to support your explanations.

MarketingExplain what market research is, how it can be carried out and why it could be important. Market research is a way of collecting information about an audience to help launch and promote your product/service. It is a key part of making sure that your product/service will be giving customers what they want but making sure that it is still profitable for you. This information helps entrepreneurs make correct and profitable decisions.

Lots of new businesses/entrepreneurs make the mistake of launching their product/service without fully knowing what their customers want; this will often result in bankruptcy and expensive mistakes.

Though there are two main types of research that a customer will do, customer research, this is where companies will look at the habits of their audience, tallying up how much their product/service will be used, how many products or how much of their service will be used in a year.The second type of research that will be conducted is business to business (B2B), for example if a phone from somewhere like A where to be sold to two other companies, e.g. B and C, some companies may only be interested in where company B and C got their product from, and they may only be interested in company A for how well they have marketed the product and how good their marketing has been for the product.

Explain market analysis. What is it done and who could carry it out for you? A market analysis is a way of studying attractiveness and dynamics of a companies marketing in their industry, it helps to find their strengths and weaknesses.Other things that they will need to find out are,Market size: This can be done by evaluating current sales and potential sales of the product/service; this can be done by looking at government data, trade associations, financial data from major players, and customer surveys.

Market Growth rate: This is when companies will find out how many of a product/service has been used in the past compared to how much the product has sold/how much of the service has been used now. This will give the business a rough guideline for knowing whether it will be difficult to make money in the market you’re going in to. Things you can look in to when doing this are, buyer power, supplier power, barriers to entry, threat of substitute product and rivalry among firms in the industry.

Industry Cost Structure: This is important to enable findings to success; it helps to determine where value is isolating costs and where value can be added. It will also help to develop a competitive advantage.

Distribution channels: Researching existing distribution channels, to see how direct the product/service is for the customers. Looking in to trends and emerging channels can

offer an opportunity to develop a competitive challenge. The same goes for Channel power structure, for example if a product/service has a small audience they will have a larger negotiating power over larger manufacturers that will already have a large audience.

Market Trends: Changes in the market are important because they are often are source of new opportunities and threats. These can include things like price, demand for variety and level of emphasis on service and support. Regional trends may also be relevant.

Key Success Factors: These are all important things for a company to achieve its marketing goals.

- Access to essential resources.- Ability to achieve economies of scale.- Access to distribution channels.- Technological progress.

Explain marketing strategy using examples. These are ways of allowing organisations to concentrate its resources on the priority opportunities with the goals of increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage.These can include long term activities in marketing that deal with the analysis of strategic situations of a company and the formulation, evaluation and selection of market-orientated strategies.

For example, when there is a new film that is coming out they will create a range of different medias to promote it to the audience, they will use a poster, TV advertisement, a bus stop poster and they may also use a poster that actually goes on busses, by using this range of advertisements it will give a larger audience for the DVD/film as more people will see it the more places it is. This will work really well for film producers as it will secure viewers if they make it look really good.

Why is advertising so important to an organisation? Use examples to help you explain. Advertising is important to any company because without advertisements products wouldn’t get sold, advertising keeps the audience/potential buyers informed about new services and product, to raise awareness and gain a good market disposal.

For example, if there is a new CD coming out, without advertising it, people won’t know of it or that it’s coming out meaning sales would go down, whereas advertising raises public awareness and heightens sales.

What is brand promotion and what methods could you use to promote a brand? Brand promotion is the most common marketing strategy used to increase product awareness, customer loyalty, competitiveness, sake and overall good about sales.Businesses use it to keep their customers keep and show what’s different about the product compared to others.

PRWhat are some of the key principals involved in managing the message?

- Communicate early, communicate often.- Communicate what you know when you know it.- Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know”, as long as you follow that with ‘I’ll find out

as soon as possible”.- Let everyone know what is happening, why, and what people can do to help”- Reinforce what is staying the same, talk about what might be being changed.- Create multiple, targeted approached to reach different audiences.- Communicate openly, honestly, and frequently as things change.- Establish feedback from people addicted by the change to leadership from on-

going decisions.- Communicate the initial results and early progress of change efforts to

everyone.- Acknowledge and thank everyone that helped to contribute.- Continue to communicate well after changed occur and as long as the

transition continues.

What is positive publicity? Find an example of it to help explain. Positive publicity is something that you will need to make sure that there are no negative effects on your audience’s opinion.For example if there are negative effects on the product/service being advertised, then the audience won’t want to buy/use it.

In public relations terms, what is spin? Find an example to help you with your response.Spin is a form of propaganda; it is done by giving an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade the public’s opinion in favour or against a certain organization or public figure.Though more traditional businesses will use traditional public relations, most will now use a spin, which will entail disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative strategies.

For example, the UK Government officer Jo Moore said “It’s now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury” in September 2011, referring to the attacks on the World Trade Centre, when this email was reported to the press it caused world wide outrage for which Jo Moore was forced to say sorry. Later on she was then made to resign after sending an email of similar content following the death of Princess Margret.

Why might a person or a company engage in damage limitation? Using an example will improve your grade. The Deep-water Horizon oil Spill, BP Oil spill, Claimed 11 lives and was considered one of the largest accidental marine oil spill’s, from 8-31% larger than the previous largest, the oil spill was followed by an explosion and sinking of the deep-water oil rig and was then capped 2 months later, estimated at a total of 4.9 million barrels leaking.

What benefit could there be to an organisation to create an event? Use an example of a marketing or PR event to support your responses. A market event can be used to draw audiences to a product/service by bringing them all to a place to advertise or have a taster day, this is a good way to guarantee sales because if the audience like the product they will want to buy it and will probably suggest it to friends.

What is lobbying and who is most likely to be influenced by it? Lobbying is an act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by many different types organized groups, individuals, and the government.