In marketing, publicity is the public visibility or awareness for any product, service or organization (company, charity, etc.). … The other elements of the promotional mix are advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing and personal selling.
Publicity is an unpaid promotion with the help of thirds parties such as media which shows the complete information about the product or brand by creating news or buzz.
Types of Publicity
1) Press Conferences:
This is one of the oldest methods of publicity where a person from the company talks about the product of the company in the media, which later is published on the various media platforms.
2) Visits:
Sometimes media or press itself visits business outlets to get information about new and innovative products to make their audience aware of it.
3) Press Releases:
A short story is created by public relation professional to publish it on the media platforms.
4) Informal discussions:
This method involves oral publicity or word of mouth to promote the product of a company. A third party uses the product and shares their personal experience with the product, whether it is a positive or a negative experience.
This method is very popular these days. Many companies reach Instagram or YouTube influencers to talk about their products on their social media handles.
5) Presentations:
The new product or the company is introduced to the public by presentation, lecture, demonstration, speech about the features of the product.
Objectives of Publicity
Publicity provides long-term benefits to the company. Followings are the different objectives of publicity.
- General Public trust and relied upon publicity more than advertising. Therefore, publicity creates goodwill of the company.
- It creates news or buzz around the city to grab the attention of people.
- The consumers usually believe that information provided through publicity is more genuine, reliable, and have more credibility.
- It accelerates product sales by instantly creating getting public attention.
Advantages of Publicity
- Publicity is cost-efficient activity as it is almost a free practice.
- Publicity is easily trusted by customers.
- Publicity provides detailed information about the brand and products to customers.
- As information is published in the form of news, it is viewed by a huge audience.
- It is the fastest mean of promotion, as it also involves a huge number of genuine audiences.
- The company can become popular over-night by going viral.
- Publicity helps in building strong public relations.
Disadvantages of Publicity
- The publicity can either be positive as well as negative because publicity also talks about the negative features of the product. Hence, it can ruin the image of the brand of the company.
- The sales volume can also decrease drastically because of negative publicity.
- Loyal customers can lose trust in the company because of bad publicity.
- There are chances that the company might lose its business partners and associates because of the bad reputation created by bad publicity.