Public marketing: an increasingly relevant aspect for the success of public policies

Marketing and communication actions undertaken by the public sector, at national, regional and local level, have made a qualitative leap in recent years in terms of diversity of formats, channels, messages and target audiences. All this brings a high added value to society and a better knowledge of all the activities carried out and public services offered.

Marketing and communication play a fundamental role in achieving legitimacy, effectiveness and efficiency of public policies and services. In this regard, the objectives set in public sector agendas in this area should include aspects of great importance for public policies, such as the following:

• Inform the different target audiences of civil society about actions, key milestones and the results, effects and impacts of public policies.
• Generate trust and credibility in public institutions and actors.
• Mobilize the various stakeholders and influential groups, and encourage participation and feedback from civil society.
• Improve transparency, accountability and innovation in public policies.
• Strengthen governance by improving coordination systems between what is done and what is disseminated and disclosed.

From Novadays' perspective, the design and implementation of communication and marketing strategies must be considered as a complementary condition in all stages of the public policy and service cycle: design, formulation, implementation and evaluation.

In this cycle, in Novadays' opinion, it is important to highlight the greater emphasis that communication and marketing actions should have in the continuous phase of analysis and evaluation of the milestones achieved in the process of implementing public policies and services, in order to maximize the results, effects and impacts of the projects, programs and plans carried out.

The increasing complexity of public policies and their investment programs requires considering communication and public marketing as a cross-cutting objective and integrating the structures and techniques necessary to achieve public marketing objectives into their design.

Novadays' support to the public entities managing these large investment programs already includes the necessary mechanisms to maximize the impact of public marketing.

As an example, the complexity of the actors currently involved in any major public investment program must be translated into the implementation of collaboration mechanisms that were not previously necessary. Broadly speaking, there are two complementary levels of collaboration where the public sector can work to maximize and multiply the impact of public communication and marketing:

• Internal, continuous and systematic collaboration with the technical departments in charge of the execution of ongoing projects and the communication and marketing departments, offices or companies.
• External collaboration: defining a specific strategy for dissemination and disclosure with the coordinated and articulated participation of both public and private entities involved in the execution of the programs.