What is the difference between PR and Marketing?
It’s incredibly easy to confuse the two ideas, the two are often so interlinked.
First, let’s start with how these two functions are defined:
Public Relations: The professional maintenance of a favorable public image by a company, other organization, or famous person
Marketing: The action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising
The main difference? Marketing is focused on promoting and selling a specific product, whereas PR is focused on maintaining a positive reputation for a company as a whole.
Essentially, marketing is promoting or selling a specific product or service. It is about shouting from the rooftops to say that your brand or profile is worthy of a consumer’s highly coveted engagement. And while it can involve more traditional channels like advertorials, marketing can draw upon a plethora of tactics - from celebrity ambassadors to affiliate schemes - from competitions to pay per click advertising.
Marketing is the equivalent of me telling you how brilliant you are, or paying someone to announce it to your relevant audiences in an exciting way. By contrast, PR is almost like hearing from a good friend how much they enjoyed working with you and why.
PR focuses on creating a foundation of trust and authenticity. It examines your brand, finds its purpose and creates stories that speak to consumers and creates a lasting relationship with them.
Metrics of Success
For a marketeer to understand the success associated with a project, there are a few questions they’ll ask to determine whether the campaign was successful:
Did the product marketed meet or exceed the sales goals?
How high was the return on investment (ROI)?
Did you see an increased activity on social media platforms?
However, for PR teams, there are different ways to notice success such as:
Consistent, positive and top-tier media titles that are relevant to the brand
A flurry of awards won at high-profile industry events
A feeling of momentum from relevant journalists, industry influencers, and the general public about the company as a whole
How it all comes together
The truth is, you can’t market without doing a little PR, and you can’t do PR without a little marketing.
The end goals — selling products and creating an army of advocates for your brand — are just too intertwined. In the simplest terms, if no one knows about your brand, they won’t come to you in the first place (marketing), and if people aren’t connecting with your brand on an emotional level and trusting you enough, they’re probably not going to take the time to spend their money on your brand.
