The marketing Umbrella

Today we have a wonderful guest blog from work experience student, Sophie Morgan. As you might know, Sophie joined us for a week as part of her A level business studies. Today, she’s sharing some great knowledge on the marketing umbrella and how PR fits into the wider marketing scope. Enjoy!

In this blog I will be talking though the 12 subsections of the marketing umbrella and how PR fits into this. A common misconception in the business world is that PR and ‘marketing’ and ‘advertising’ are all the same thing. However this isn’t true – marketing is the umbrella term for all the subtopics that help a business get their product or service to the right audience. It helps to spread brand awareness, build customer retention and encourage people to buy what they are selling. The different subtopics include:

• Advertising – Paid placements (TV, print, billboards etc)
• Content development – Owned content that attracts and educates (blogs, videos etc)
• Analytics – Measuring and interpreting data
• Branding & Collateral – defining an identity (logo, colours etc)
• Website development – used with content and analytics
• Events – live or virtual (direct audience interaction and memories)
• Social media – platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn etc
• Influencer relationships – partnering with creators to reach their audience
• Market research – insights into consumer needs (quantitative or qualitative)
• Strategy – the plan that ties all channels together (objectives, targets etc)
• Strategic partnerships – collaborations with complementary brands

The one I haven’t mentioned yet is PR which stands for public relations, this is what Carnsight focuses on and is a really important aspect of marketing. There are a couple aspects that set PR apart from the other disciplines, the first one being that its Earned, not paid or owned. PR is gained through coverage such as newspapers, TV, influencers etc and unlike marketing the media coverage isn’t payed for. A PR agency such as Carnsight will reach out to these companies or people to gain this coverage, the newspaper would gain clicks = money and the business would gain more reputation meaning people are more likely to purchase their products. This is a bit different for influencers who usually gain something for free instead, for example rare beauty sends a blush to an influencer for free, they try it then review it on a video, rare beauty will then gain more views on their product and the influencer will get a free product. Both parties are kept happy.

PR also overlaps with other aspects of marketing such as in the case of Carnsight, Social media. Pre-social media there was just printed media such as newspapers, ideas would be pitched to them and that’s how press released happened. Now with the invention of social media, the public and the media are practically the same, we can use influencers in PR, we can tell stories on social media, and we can create a public reputation on social media. Currently, we find that in PR , press stories are mostly done alongside social media posts, to amplify the effects on the consumer.

In conclusion, every discipline under the marketing umbrella is important and have their roles to play in getting the product or service to the correct consumer, but the binding factor is PR and how trust is needed to create a successful brand. This could be though a newspaper feature or a influencer with a good reputation speaking positively about the brand, but its all built on PR.