03 marketing

A basic tool of the publicist is the press release, but other techniques include telephone press conferences, in-studio media tours, multi-component video news releases, newswire stories, and internet releases. For these releases to be used by the media, they must attract the interest of the public. The most successful publicity releases are related to topics of current interest.

Public relations

The term public relations means the art and science of building relationships between an organization and its key publics. It is concerned with communications management. Corporations use marketing public relations to convey information about the products they manufacture or services they provide to potential customers to support their direct sales efforts. They also use public-relations as a vehicle to reach legislators and other politicians, seeking favourable tax, regulatory, and other treatment, and they may use public relations to portray themselves as enlightened employers, in support of human-resources recruiting programs.

Non-profit organizations, including schools and universities, hospitals, and human and social service agencies, use public relations in support of awareness programs, fund-raising programs, staff recruiting, and to increase patronage of their services.

Museum as non-profitable institutions

The same advertising techniques used to promote commercial goods and services can be used to inform, educate and motivate the public about non-commercial issues, such as political ideology, energy conservation, religious recruitment, and deforestation.

Advertising, in its non-commercial guise, is a powerful educational tool capable of reaching and motivating large audiences. Advertising justifies its existence when used in the public interest - it is a too powerful tool to use solely for commercial purposes.

Museums are usually open to the general public, sometimes charging an admission fee. Some museums have free entrance, either permanently or on special days, e.g. once per week or year. Museums are usually not run for the purpose of making a profit, unlike galleries which engage in the sale of objects. There are governmental museums, non-governmental or non-profit museums, and privately-owned or family museums. The marketing of a museum is not seen in terms of a "product," but rather as the process by which one can build a relationship between the museum and the public.

Marketing plan of the museum must include these targets:

- introduce the museum product

- managing the product

- communicating the museum product

- implementing the marketing effort

- by using SWOT analysis, to identify the target audience

- public relations (tools of media relations: media advisory, news/press release, news conference, editorial board meetings, letters to the editor)

- knowing of the fundraising cycle

Marketing and public relations help the museum achieve its mission to inspire people to learn about history, art and science by letting its audiences know about the museum’s terrific array of exhibits, programs, and events.