by Therese Flores, Flores Communications E-mail Therese at gtflores@concentric.net.

When a new company starts out, one of the first major tasks is letting people know who you are and what you are about. While advertising promotes your messages, it is usually a secondary tool, especially with Internet businesses.

Therefore, to build the identity, awareness, and mindshare needed to compete in today's economy, you need to put public relations (PR) as a priority in your marketing mix.

Identity

PR assists in the creation of a company, product, or service identity. All other marketing functions, including advertising and marketing communications, reinforce this identity.

esides settling on a company, product, or service name, you should ask the question "What is my company, product, or service about?" Your explanation to answer this fundamental question begins the identity search process.

Once you have the basic points as a foundation, the message-shaping process begins. Understanding your key messages and how they relate to your overall goals is a full-circle approach to identity creation.

Message shaping crafts a company, product, or service's identity into concise platforms -- not unlike what is done in creating a political platform, for example -- that project certain messages, feelings, facts, words, visuals, etc.

For example, you can churn out dozens of press releases, brochures, and ads, but without consistent themes, words, messages, tones, visuals, and organization, you have no ability to successfully craft a business purpose, media and business relations, or ongoing evaluation into your marketing efforts.

Awareness

While creating an identity is largely a planning element of this PR process, awareness is a combination of strategy and implementation.

Once you have a carefully crafted identity, which also takes into account your position among your competitors, next comes the question "How can I let my prospective buyers or audience know about my company or product?" The answer to this question tells you how to create awareness.

Of all the marketing elements, PR is often the most credible and effective means of creating awareness, especially at the beginning of a new business venture. To create awareness, you need to determine how to reach your audience. PR helps you to identify key publics and the appropriate tools and messages to reach and communicate with those publics.

Additionally, PR helps you break through the information overload that your publics experience on a daily basis, through carefully strategizing publicity and relationships through a positioning process. This positioning approach looks to pick the best message and marketing medium to reach the mind of a target audience.

The key to awareness, however, is use of a calculated PR plan that employs as many quantifiable objectives as possible, including evaluation. This would include short- and long-term goals, and finish-date and ongoing projects. And, you would integrate other marketing-mix tools, as necessary, to reach your goals.

For example, utilizing a series of steps and timelines, PR can help you place an article in a trade magazine about your new product launch, while at the same time you coordinate a product ad in the same or following issues. Published articles are then used as reprints in your press kits and marketing materials to reinforce product credibility and interest to select target publics.

Mindshare

If you have a clear identity and calculated awareness, then through implementation the result should be mindshare. This means that when XYZ Company thinks about purchasing widgets, for example, your widgets should share a piece of XYZ Company's mind. This is good, because you're considered a possibility for purchase.

You want your identity and awareness to create mindshare -- the result of successful branding -- because this is what eventually causes a sale.

Getting from mindshare to short list to actual purchase leans heavily on an ongoing PR plan that integrates, as needed, other parts of the marketing mix, including one-on-one selling.

In summary, PR defines and organizes your messages -- a must for new and old companies alike. PR improves the cost effectiveness and overall success of your marketing plan. PR unifies all marketing elements. PR pushes you to strategize, develop business and media relationships, create brands, and receive needed publicity.

Finally, without PR, you're missing a vital component in whether or not your business with survive.

For more information about this subject or public relations in general, please contact Therese Flores, owner of Flores Communications E-mail Therese at gtflores@concentric.net.