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Though marketing, advertising and public relations can all be integral to the success of your company and they all have some glaring similarities in how they can help your company succeed on some level; each is indeed a different element, approached in a different way in order for it to work the way it is supposed to work in an effort to reach an ultimate goal.

Marketing could be considered the whole ball of wax in this equation. A company’s marketing department could be subdivided into several smaller sections that operate as separate entities, but all work toward the same ultimate goal – which is the success and growth of the company.

A company’s marketing department could, and should include smaller departments that are responsible for: public relations, advertising, customer service, market share research as well as pricing, distribution and product placement.

The piece of the equation that is advertising has the sole responsibility of putting your product or service where the public can see it. Advertising lets the consumer know what it is that you have to offer, then lets them know why exactly they need it. A company could pay a pretty penny for advertising; in fact the advertising budget is often the largest part of the marketing plan’s expenditure. As the saying goes, “you have to spend money to make money.”

Public relations can make prospective consumers want to buy your product or your service, but public relations is a much less direct approach to gaining sales than advertising. The point of public relations is to highlight all of the positive things that your company does and is involved in, while simultaneously keeping anything that could possibly be construed as a negative out of the public eye. It is the public relations departments’ responsibility to make the company look good in the public eye and they will take several routes and measures to get there. A public relations department may schedule charity events, distribute press releases highlighting company achievements or company community efforts and schedule public speaking appearances at educational or industry seminars – anything that can put the company under a good light while in the public eye is the public relations department’s main concern.

The company marketing plan is how both of these integral parts of business come together, along with several other aspects, to ensure company success and growth. Each individual focal point of the marketing department is integral to the success of the marketing plan.

Market research, which is probably the most intensive piece of the puzzle, will determine exactly who your target customers are.

With this information in hand, the product or service that you are offering can be priced accordingly for the target audience. Once pricing is established, the advertising department can begin its job of getting the word out that your company has a service to offer. Depending upon the advertising budget, this can be done in many ways: through television, radio, print ads, billboards and/or flyers pointed directly toward the target customer.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday considerably raised its expectations for inflation this year and brought forward the time frame on when it will next raise interest rates.

However, the central bank gave no indication as to when it will begin cutting back on its aggressive bond-buying program, though Fed Chairman Jerome Powell acknowledged that officials discussed the issue at the meeting.

“You can think of this meeting that we had as the ‘talking about talking about’ meeting,” Powell said in a phrase that recalled a statement he made a year ago that the Fed wasn’t “thinking about thinking about raising rates.”

As expected, the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee unanimously left its benchmark short-term borrowing rate anchored near zero. But officials indicated that rate hikes could come as soon as 2023, after saying in March that it saw no increases until at least 2024. The so-called dot plot of individual member expectations pointed to two hikes in 2023.

Though the Fed raised its headline inflation expectation to 3.4%, a full percentage point higher than the March projection, the post-meeting statement continued to say that inflation pressures are “transitory.” The raised expectations come amid the biggest rise in consumer prices in about 13 years.

“This is not what the market expected,” said James McCann, deputy chief economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “The Fed is now signaling that rates will need to rise sooner and faster, with their forecast suggesting two hikes in 2023. This change in stance jars a little with the Fed’s recent claims that the recent spike in inflation is temporary.”

Markets reacted to the Fed news, with stocks falling and government bond yields higher as investors anticipated tighter Fed policy ahead, including the likelihood that the bond purchases will slow as soon as this year.

“If you’re going to get two rate hikes in 2023, you have to start tapering fairly soon to reach that goal,” said Kathy Jones, head of fixed income at Charles Schwab. “It takes maybe 10 months to a year to taper at a moderate pace. Then you’re looking at we need to start tapering maybe later this year, and if the economy continues to run a little bit hot, rate hikes sooner rather than later.”

Even with the raised forecast for this year, the committee still sees inflation trending to its 2% goal over the long run.

“Our expectation is these high inflation readings now will abate,” Powell said at his post-meeting news conference.

Powell also cautioned about reading too much into the dot-plot, saying it is “not a great forecaster of future rate moves. “Lift-off is well into the future,” he said.