PR: The Credibility Enhancer.

• Author: Beavers-Moss, Deborah
• Position: Maintaining public relations

Public relations is an often-neglected, but integral part of marketing.

Remember, it's important to have a PR plan that meshes with your bank's marketing and strategic objectives.

Let's face it: A bank's most valuable asset is its reputation. In today's world--where banking executives face rising competition, restructurings, mergers and diminished resources--bank marketers must know how to protect and uphold that reputation. To accomplish this goal, managers need skilled public relations professionals working in conjunction with marketing personnel. And, these PR experts constantly need to keep their fingers on the publicity pulse of the marketplace.

Good public relations can enhance a bank's marketing, burnish its image in the community and improve the institution's overall competitiveness. The relationship between marketing and public relations is much like that between any process and its accompanying components. Marketing is the process, one associated with promoting goods or services in an effort to sell them.

Traditionally, the classic marketing components have been labeled the four Ps:

Product Banks select and develop their products/services.

Price: Banks determine the price at which to sell these products/services.

Place: Banks select and design the distribution channels through which they sell these products/services.

Promotion: Banks enhance or generate demand for the product.

Clearly, public relations falls under the "P" for promotion, with its counterparts: advertising, direct mail, signage and other interest-generating campaigns. Public relations serves to enhance demand for products and services through building credibility. After identifying the various public groups to which a bank caters, a bank establishes a relationship with each group according to that group's needs and wants. When PR defines a bank's primary public, it's the same as advertising defining the bank's target markets. For example, two significant segments of the public for banks are stockholders and government agencies.

Since the ultimate goal of the marketing process is to promote the sale of goods or services, then public relations and its role in supporting the advertising message should be considered an essential element of the marketing process. "In a perfect world, the PR plan is a subset of the organization's marketing plan," says Cheryl O'Donoghue, senior vice president of marketing for Frontine Group FTR, a sales training and consulting firm in Lombard, Ill. O'Donoghue explains that public relations typically stands by itself in the larger institutions due to the preponderance of investor relations activities they support. "While that's understandable, certain PR activities seem to fall by the wayside," says O'Donoghue. "The more tactical public relations activities become of secondary importance." This point shouldn't be taken lightly and can instead be used to raise a red warning flag for management to act upon. The reality is that strategy can be discussed and rationalized all day, but until a public relations p rogram's tactical measures are in place and communication flow is operational, a PR department is virtually valueless.

O'Donoghue advocates having a public relations team work hand-in-hand with the marketing department. "This can be accomplished by having PR staff in the marketing department or outsourcing all public relations activity." Banks may differ when it comes to the manner in which they execute their PR activities, but none question its essential role in the marketing plan. Its place in the marketing mix is as essential as any component and...