People who have nothing to do with business and promotion strategies can hardly realise how much time, effort, and creativity it takes to make a business recognisable and demanded. Very often, it’s not just an eye-catching image or video but also a wealth of studies about human psychology.
Different specialists are responsible for making the brand popular. It depends on the aim; for instance, if the company strives to establish trustworthiness and build a strong reputation around the brand, it’s a task for PR managers. If the aim is to make the product or service popular and improve sales, a marketing team comes into play. In our article, you’ll be able to dive into the incredible world of PR and marketing, work out the specifics of each approach, and distinguish their main differences to know what to consider when choosing between them.
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We’ll start by taking the helicopter view of both approaches. Public relations, or PR, focuses on building and maintaining good relations between the organisation and its audiences. Usually, those include customers, employees, business partners, investors, and media. As a rule, PR strategies are often a long-term process and unpredictable. Therefore, PR managers should always stay on their toes and be ready to react to any circumstances swiftly and without delays so that the brand’s positive reputation doesn’t get damaged.
Marketing campaigns aim to make the brand more popular, which is supposed to increase sales and revenue. The only target audience marketing focuses on its customers. Whether they are existing or potential ones, marketing strategies pursue the same purpose – winning their attention and inspiring them to make a purchase.
Based on the cursory look we’ve just taken at these two strategies, we can conclude that even though both approaches contribute to the brand’s recognition, marketing and PR pursue different goals and different audiences. Marketing is a broader concept, as it includes more complex objectives. It would be fair to state that PR is a support tool for marketing campaigns, but never vice versa.
Although marketing and PR can hardly exist without each other, the paradox is that they have more differences than similarities. We’ll start with the latter ones and list them below:
We’ve already identified some differences between these two processes, so now it’s time to go beyond the surface level and search them more thoroughly. To achieve their goals, both campaigns comprise a set of actions to be done, and we’ll have a look at each of them.
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Roughly speaking, both marketing and PR work towards increasing the brand’s recognition and popularity, which is expected to increase sales. If, to be more precise, the goal of PR is selling products or services by creating a positive image and perception of the brand and fine-tuning communication processes with the brand’s audiences. The goal of marketing is selling products or services by reaching people through various communication channels and closing their emerging needs.
Let us remind that PR interacts with more audiences than marketing. Besides customers, PR deals with stakeholders, partners, employees, and media. A presentation of a report on the successful completion of sales goals would be more interesting for shareholders’ ears. In contrast, press releases on new product launches will attract media and customers’ attention and boost brand awareness.
Marketing experts work toward reaching people who are genuinely interested or even need their products or services. With the help of cutting-edge AI tools, marketing managers can narrow down the general public to their target audience and connect with them through social media platforms (social media marketing), email letters (email marketing), and search engines (search engine marketing).
The PR tactics imply reputation management and an effective communication strategy focusing on informing their audiences. It includes writing press releases, interacting with media representatives, presenting the brand at public forums, writing in-house newsletters, and controlling what light the brand appears in the press. PR managers also speak on behalf of the company when a statement or comment has to be made in front of the public.
The marketing tactics are based on client research and encouraging potential or existing customers to complete a purchase funnel. The day-to-day tasks include creating and managing advertising campaigns, conducting regular industry and market research to help define the direction of marketing campaigns, developing certain content for the brand’s social media profiles, constantly tracing the analytics to identify the most effective communication channels, and many more.
Regular measurement of success can become a game-changer for both approaches. It’s a chance to identify what is ineffective and what should be improved. For the most part, PR and marketing departments use the same metrics. However, there is a handful of differences.
So, to track the performance, PR teams usually use the following:
Since PR is a part of marketing, marketing also uses the abovementioned metrics. Besides those, there are additional ones to cover:
As we can see, marketing requires quantitative data to measure success, while PR uses qualitative data.
This must be the most fundamental difference between marketing and PR. Marketing teams seek and implement solutions that will work out here and now and expect quick results from their campaigns. In PR, there is no point in anticipating positive results overnight. It’s a long-term play and rather an investment in the future than a tool to initiate quick changes.
Due to creative and non-trivial duties, both professions spark interest in many people. If you’re one of them, here is what you need to start paving your way in these industries.
Of course, to find employment in marketing, one has to obtain an undergraduate degree and sometimes even professional qualifications. Those with a degree in marketing may consider enrolling in a digital marketing course and becoming savvy with digital marketing strategies and tools. A practical experience line on your resume will enhance your chances of landing your first job.
If you’re interested in becoming a PR professional, the algorithm is the same: get at least a bachelor’s degree in communications, journalism, marketing, or any other related field and enhance your expertise. The hard truth is that even requirements for an entry position include some practical experience. The solution might be completing an internship or a work placement while obtaining the degree. It will facilitate the job search process and help get you up to speed at a new workplace.
Knowledge of marketing functions, analysing data, creating marketing strategies, generating leads and sales, providing ideas on how to increase ROI, content creation, social media profiles management, using modern marketing tools (CMS, CRM) and project management software are included in a bewildering pallet of hard skills a marketing manager should posses to appear on the list of the industry experts. The list is shorter for a public relations specialist and usually includes data research and analysis and strong content-creating and writing skills.
Remember that more than possessing hard skills is needed to find decent employment. Soft skills like communication, stress resilience, problem-solving, critical thinking, and organisational and leadership skills are a must for representatives of the two departments. Please don’t neglect to develop those and put them on your resume. But you’d better not lie – interviewers can easily detect lies during the interview if you don’t walk your talk.
To close, it’s worth emphasising that both PR and marketing exist to make the brand more recognisable and loved by the public, boosting sales and revenue. They cannot be used independently, but a tandem of a skilful PR manager and marketing professional can significantly shorten the way to achieving revenue or sales goals. At the same time, they shouldn’t be confused because the tactics and measurement metrics each approach resorts to are different. To make the most of these two, one should deeply analyse their business goals, audiences, and time frames. Only after that will you be able to develop an appropriate action plan.
