The traditional Seven Ps of Marketing

In addition to the traditional four Ps of marketing (Product, Pricing, Promotion and Placement), customer services marketing brings in an extra three, making seven in total. They are collectively known as the extended marketing mix. The extra three Ps are:

People: Anyone coming into contact with customers will have a definite impact on overall customer satisfaction. They may be part of a supporting service or directly involved in a total service. People are always very important because in the eyes of the customer, they are inseparable from the overall customer service . Because of this, they must be well trained, well motivated and be the right type of person for the job. Customers are also referred to under 'people', as they can have an effect on the customer's service experience, (eg at a sponsored event).

Process: This is the entire process in providing a service and the specific behaviour of the people involved, all of which can be crucial to the customer's satisfaction.

Physical evidence: Unlike product evidence, a service cannot be actually experienced before it is supplied, which makes it a very intangible item. This means that prospects could think that there is a greater risk in deciding whether to use a particular service. To reduce this perception of risk, and also to improve the opportunity for success, it is vital to provide potential cnew ustomers with the opportunity to see what the potential service would be like. This is normally done by providing physical evidence like as case studies or magazine articles.

Top 10 PR Tips

1) Talking about doing PR isn't as good as actually doing something. Waiting for the best story to happen can take a while, it is better to get something out there

2) Have a steady stream of appropriate PR to editors seeking your content

3) Read the up-coming Features list and try to put some PR relevant to the feature

4) Find a PR company that can make something out of your product or service, that you might think is normal

5) Use pictures with your PR to help Editors to visualise your uniqueness

6) 'The more you write the less gets read' good PR companies have learnt to be brief and to the point

7) Recycle old PR with a fresh new slant, in some fringe publications

8) Good PR agents will find a good story by just interviewing your customers

9) Fully written-up Testimonials with pictures are like gold, you can use them for PR and for sending to prospects in your marketing materials

10) Measure the success of your PR with clippings, but allow time for editors to start using your submissions

A technique used in public relations is to identify the specific target audience, and then to tailor every message to appeal directly to that audience. The audience can be a general, nationwide or worldwide audience, and it is often a segment of a entire population. Marketers often refer to "demographics" such as "black males 20-40" for example. In public relations an audience is often more fluid, being whoever a company wants to reach. For example, recent political target audiences include "soccer moms". There is also a grouping based on fitness, eating preferences etc.

As well as audiences, there are stakeholders, people who have a "stake" in a specific issue. All audiences are potential stakeholders, but not all of the stakeholders are audiences. To provide an example, a charity enlists a PR agency to produce a campaign to raise money to find potential cures for a disease. The charity and the sufferers of the disease are stakeholders, and the audience is everyone who could donate money.