Marketing Communications in Public Administration : Case: Municipal IT Unit

Marketing communications is traditionally associated with the private sector and commercial activities, but the term is nowadays also widely used in public sector contexts. In this thesis marketing communications is analysed from a public administration point of view. The empirical part deals with marketing communications executed by the Municipal IT Unit of the Ministry of Finance. The objective is to find out what is considered important when it comes to planning and implementing marketing communications in public administration, to clarify how this has been done in the Unit and to ascertain whether its marketing communications objectives have been reached. Reputation and image management, along with marketing strategy and tactics, are not discussed. The research method used is traditional qualitative research. In addition to a literature review, a questionnaire was compiled and sent to a group of municipalities’ IT managers in order to obtain supplementary data. In its entirety, the work was done from April to October of 2011. It was discovered that there are certain steps that should be taken when planning marketing communications in public administration. Special attention should be paid to customer orientation and integrated marketing communications. It turned out that the Unit’s marketing communications plan contains most of the es-sential stages of marketing communications planning. The Unit had also largely achieved its marketing communications objectives. It was recommended that special care be taken in ascertaining that the Unit’s employees are acquainted with marketing communications concepts and committed to carrying out consistent marketing communications. It was also suggested that one person be responsible for all major marketing communications tasks in the Unit and that customer research, especially concerning the success of marketing communications, be conducted on a regular basis