Page 105 - DLIS102_LIBRARY_AND_ITS_USERS

Library and its Users

Notes 14.4 Objectives and Methods of Marketing Objectives

Like other aspects of marketing promotion, public relations are used to address several broad
objectives including:
• Building Product Awareness: When introducing a new product or relaunching an existing
product, marketers can use a PR element that generates consumer attention and awareness
through media placements and special events.
• Creating Interest : Whether a PR placement is a short product article or is included with other
products in “round up” article, stories in the media can help entice a targeted audience to try
the product. For example, around the holiday season, a special holiday food may be promoted
with PR through promotional releases sent to the food media or through special events that
sample the product.
• Providing Information: PR can be used to provide customers with more in depth information
about products and services. Through articles, collateral materials, newsletters and websites,
PR delivers information to customers that can help them gain understanding of the product.
• Stimulating Demand: A positive article in a newspaper, on a TV news show or mentioned on
the Internet, often results in a discernable increase in product sales.
• Reinforcing the Brand : In many companies the public relations function is also involved with
brand reinforcement by maintaining positive relationships with key audiences, and thereby
aiding in building a strong image. Today it is ever more important for companies and brands
to build a good image. A strong image helps the company build its business and it can help
the company in times of crises as well.

Methods

With more and more of your customers coming online to talk with, shop, read, and research, being
easily accessible online is vital to your company’s success. Customers come online to read about
you from other customers, the media, and your own website. With so many places for them to find
out about you, ensure that you are monitoring the WOM (word of mouth) being generated about
you. Since it’s a bit difficult to control the WOM your company receives online, you can control the
content your own site or blog produces. Creating great content on your site can help to influence
the other WOM media or bloggers share about you, and it can also help customers to see the whole
picture despite some negative WOM they may have read about you elsewhere. This requires that
you actively monitor other sources of information and that you are actively participating on your
own website.
The four ways to help customers find you first:
1. Use keyword rich copy. Learn what customers are searching for by using Google Alerts
and the Google Keyword tool to see what keywords customers are searching for. Though
this will give you a large list of keywords customers search for regularly, remember to
pay attention to the longer keyword sequences, or the long-tail keywords. These are
keywords and phrases that fewer customers search for because of their length. The main
thing to remember here is that searches made in an online search engine like Google are
often times brand new searches that web users have never searched for before. This is
important to remember so that you can avoid competing with the millions of other blogs
trying to be found through some of the most searched keywords. It is hard to differentiate
yourself as it is, so why not do something small that will make it a bit easier?
2. Optimize your images. Just like the title and the rest of your website’s copy, you can
optimize your image titles. Since search engine spiders (who “crawl” the web,

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