Strategic Public Relations Management: Developing Effective Programs For Sunshine Cafe

Market Research

Discuss about the Strategic Public Relations Management.

Public relation refers to the process of maintaining a cordial and healthy relation between the organization and all the people or public related to the organization (Grunig 2013). There are various ways to maintain the public relation of an organization. The first and foremost criteria of public relation are the free flow of true information among the organization and the public. In this regard, information refers to that which is necessary for both the organization and the public. On the other hand, public relation can be obtained by satisfying the various needs of the customers. However, there are other ways to maintain the public relation for an organization. It is necessary to formulate some public relation strategies in order to create a good relation with the customers and publics (Cutlip 2013). In this regard, it is also necessary to have some public relation tactics along with the strategies to achieve the public relation goal of the organization. This study is about the development of the public relation programs for Sunshine Cafe. Sunshine cafe is a small café operating in Australia. In this study, the target audience of the company is explained in details.

Sunshine is a cafe operating in a small area of Brisbane, Australia. As per the given situation, Sunshine Cafe is taking strong initiatives in order to develop a strong public relation. Some market research is needed to develop and implement public relation strategies and tactics. In this regard, market research can be done in various aspects like to research the background of the business; to conduct a research on the community and people of the community in which the company is operating; to conduct research on the buying pattern of the people of the community and many others (Zikmund et al.2013). Some of the major above discussed aspects are evaluated below in order to make the public relation strategy of Sunshine Cafe.

The two main goal of Sunshine Cafe in public relation are to create a good relation with the customers of the organization and to gain a good image of the organization by satisfying the needs of the customers of the organization (Olasky 2013). As per the market research, it has been seen that there is a high demand of cafes in the regions of Brisbane. The presence of a numerous number of schools, colleges, corporate offices leads to the high demand of cafe related foods like coffee, tea, various kinds of smacks, light foods and other. Along with the good foods, it has been observed in the market research that along with the foods, they like to have background music, free internet connection so that they can gain access to social media. Apart from the educational and business institutes, the research says that the common people of the local community have a great taste for the café related products. It has been seen that they use to visit the local cafes on a regular basis. Hence, as per the conducted market research, it can be concluded that there is a fair scope for Sunshine Café to have a good business in that community. Thus, it is necessary for Sunshine Café to formulate some effective as well as efficient public relation strategies to retain their spot in the highly competitive market.

Objectives

Based on the above market research, Sunshine Café has set up some of the major objectives of their public relation campaign that will provide them the necessary direction to achieve the ultimate objective of the organization. The objectives are discussed below:

To Build Product Awareness: The first objective is to use the various elements of the public relation campaign in order to build awareness about the café and the various products of the café. The public relation campaign will help to generate the attention and awareness of the people of the community with the help of media placements and special events (Hendrix, Hayes and Kumar 2012).

To Provide Information: The second objective is to use public relation campaigns to provide the customers with more valuable information about the various products and services of the café. This can be done with the help of various kinds of articles, collateral materials, websites, newsletters and many others (Black 2013).

To Simulate Demand: The third objective is to increase the demand of the products and services of Sunshine Café. This can be done with the help of positive and attractive articles in the newspaper, television and others (Heath 2013).

To Reinforce the Brand: The fourth objective is to reinforce the brand image of Sunshine Café with the help of the public relation campaigns of the company. It is important for the companies to create a good brand image in order to stay in the competition. All these are the objectives set up by the Sunshine Café in order to promote the procedures of public relation (Jefkins 2016).

As discussed above, Sunshine Café is operating in the region of Brisbane, Australia. Different aspects need to be considered at the time of formulating the strategies of public relation. One of those aspects is the description of the target audience of Sunshine Café. Target audience refers to the potential customers of the company. In the case of Sunshine Café, the target audience of the café can be divided into two parts (Spiess et al. 2014). They are demographic segmentation of the target audience and psychographic segmentation of the target audience. Both these aspects of target audience of Sunshine Café are discussed below:

Demographic segmentation of the target audience refers to the process of identification of the target customers based on certain aspects like age, gender, traits, marital status, income education and others. In case of Sunshine Café, all these above aspects play an important role in the identification of the target audience. It has been said earlier that the area in which Sunshine Café is operating is full of school, colleges, corporate offices and business institutions. Due to the presence of school colleges, there are many potential customers between the age group of 15 to 25 as there are both school goers and college goers (Wedel and Kamakura 2012). On the other hand, due to the existence of a lot of corporate offices and business institutions, people in the age group of 25 to 60 years can be seen here. Considering the gender of the customers, both men and women are the potential customers of the café. With the existence of educational institutes and business organization, people from both income group and non-income group are the potential customers of the café. In addition, the people from the local community have a great taste for the products and services. The people of the local community consists of both men and women; income and non-income group and many other. This is the demographic segmentation of the target audience of the customers of Sunshine Café (Sharma and Lambert 2013).

Target Audience

Psychographic segmentation of the target audience refers to identify the target customers of the organization based on some aspects like attitudes, values, lifestyles and others (Mishra 2016). The potential customers of Sunshine Café include customers from different lifestyles. The lifestyle of the school or college goers is different from the lifestyle of corporate people and businesspersons as income is the main differentiator here. There are customers from different values; as the values of the middle class people of the community may not be same with the values of the top-level businesspersons in that area. On the other hand, people from different attitudes are the potential customers of the café as the attitudes of the students are not same as the attitudes of the businessperson or the professional persons. These are the target audience of Sunshine Café based on both demographic and psychographic segmentation. It is important to take into consideration of all these target audiences, as they are the main part of the public relation program of the company.

Based on the target market, the public relation strategies of Sunshine Café are discussed below:

Collaboration with Influencers: Many aspects help to influence the public relation campaign of an organization. They are words of mouth, press coverage, endorsements and others. In this regard, the strategy will be to make collaboration with these influential factors so that public relation can be retained. This will help to cover all the target audience of the café (Smith 2012).

Communication of the ‘WHY’: in the era of technological evolution, the customers evaluate all the companies and their products. Now a day, the customers like to check the products before purchase decision. Thus, the strategy will be to publish the ‘Why behind’ the company so that the café can be appealing to the target audience (Austin and Pinkleton 2015).

Creation of Content, Not Advertisements: The next strategy will be to create advertisements that have a solid content to attract the target audience. It is needed that Sunshine Café become more intelligent and customize with the content of their advertisements.

Traditional Press Release: The last but not the least strategy is to give importance to the traditional press releases like commuter paper, newspapers, trade journals, various broadcast shows and others, as they are still able to attract the attention of the target customers of the café.

Tactics refer to the processes or steps that help to complete strategies of the organization. It is needed for Sunshine Cafe in order to make the business popular. Some of the major tactics regarding the strategies of Sunshine café are discussed below:

• As per the first strategy of Sunshine Café, it is needed to collaborate with the influencers. In this regard, various kinds of press releases, which contain the information of about the products and services of the company, need to be released so that they can get to the target market of the company. On the other hand, various kinds of visual aids about the cafe can be released so that they can rotate by the mouth of the persons.
• As per the second strategy of Sunshine Café, the company can apply a tactic by stating the purpose of the organization in the official website of the company. This process will give the target audience the necessary information of the café like the quality of the foods and services of the cafe; value of the different products and services of the café and many others (Meng and Berger 2013).
• The next tactic is to create the type of advertisement that exclusively focuses on the content of it. It implies that the Sunshine Café not only give emphasis on the selling proposition in the advertisements, but also give emphasis on the content of the advertisement by cresting effective advertisement campaigns.
• The last tactic is to give emphasis on the traditional means of press releases like the local newspaper, trade journal and many others. These tactics will help the organization reach to the target audience of Sunshine Café (Gregory 2015).

Conclusion

As per the above study, it can be observed that public relation is an important aspect in the success of an organization. This study says that there are some specific processes in the public relation process. The first important step is the market research to understand the need of public relation strategies. Setting up of the objectives is the nest step as it gives the necessary direction to the organization. After that, the evaluation of the target customers is needed. The next two processes are the development and implementation of the public relation strategies and tactics. Hence, from the above study it can be recommended that the organizations need to follow these above steps at the time of developing the public relation campaigns for the business.

References

Austin, E.W. and Pinkleton, B.E., 2015. Strategic Public Relations Management: Planning and Managing Effective Communication Campaigns(Vol. 10). Routledge.

Black, S., 2013. Practice of Public Relations. Routledge.

Cutlip, S.M., 2013. The unseen power: Public relations: A history. Routledge.

Gregory, A., 2015. Planning and managing public relations campaigns: A strategic approach. Kogan Page Publishers.

Grunig, J.E., 2013. Excellence in public relations and communication management. Routledge.

Heath, R.L. ed., 2013. Encyclopedia of public relations. Sage Publications.

Hendrix, J.A., Hayes, D.C. and Kumar, P.D., 2012. Public relations cases. Cengage Learning.

Jefkins, F., 2016. Public Relations: Made Simple. Elsevier.

Meng, J. and Berger, B., 2013. An integrated model of excellent leadership in public relations: Dimensions, measurement, and validation. Journal of Public Relations Research, 25(2), pp.141-167.

Mishra, A., 2016. Psychographic segmentation.

Olasky, M.N., 2013. Corporate public relations: A new historical perspective. Routledge.

Sharma, A. and Lambert, D.M., 2013. Segmentation of markets based on customer service. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management.

Smith, R.D., 2012. Strategic planning for public relations. Routledge.

Spiess, J., T’Joens, Y., Dragnea, R., Spencer, P. and Philippart, L., 2014. Using big data to improve customer experience and business performance. Bell Labs Technical Journal, 18(4), pp.3-17.

Wedel, M. and Kamakura, W.A., 2012. Market segmentation: Conceptual and methodological foundations (Vol. 8). Springer Science & Business Media.

Zikmund, W.G., Babin, B.J., Carr, J.C. and Griffin, M., 2013. Business research methods. Cengage Learning.

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