Marketing is a management tool, not just spin or PR

The idea that marketing and public relations is all about changing people's perceptions is not completely accurate.

Marketing is a management process that helps to identify what the public want, and helps an organisation to develop and deliver products or services to provide it, where people want it and at a price they want to pay.

Promotional and communication techniques are then used to tell people what is available, when, where and at what price and persuade them that this will meet their needs better than other uses of their time or money. The role of PR in its narrowest sense is to gain coverage in the media without paying for advertising.

Many public and voluntary sector organisations use marketing techniques to influence behaviour amongst various groups. In this context, the terms 'marketing', 'communication' and 'PR' are frequently used interchangeably without much recognition of their distinct meanings.

In a free society people will generally only change behaviour when they recognise that it is in their interest to do so.  This is where marketing has a role to play.  Many public sector organisations seek to change people’s behaviour to achieve their goals and would benefit from applying the full range of marketing techniques, not just those associated with PR or ‘spin’.

Being customer-focused is easy to claim but difficult to achieve.  It comes only with a thorough understanding of the drivers of customer behaviour.  Producing newsletters and websites, holding 'consultation' exercises and instructing staff to be courteous to the public do not achieve this aim. Nor does having a marketing department. Many marketing and PR practitioners add to the confusion by concentrating on communication and persuasion rather than gaining insight into the benefits derived by the public from changes in behaviour.

The public sector can achieve its objectives through better understanding and use of marketing as a management discipline. Marketing needs to define what behaviour is required from which segment of the public and identify why that behaviour will benefit that group. It needs to make it easy for the behaviour to occur and then it can communicate to explain why that behaviour is beneficial to the individual.

It requires the whole organisation – from top management, to the staff who deal with the public – to understand that people will do what is in their own interest. In other words, marketing is much more than changing people's perceptions – it is about designing and delivering services that people want and understand.

Peter Heath, Managing Director, The Peter Heath Consultancy