What Are The Most Significant Differences Between PR And Marketing

Posted by: KHTS Articles in News Articles March 9, 2021 - 3:18 pm 0 386 Views

If you have found yourself here you have probably realized that there is a difference between PR and marketing. Whether this is a concept completely new to you or something you find yourself quite familiar with, are you aware of what these differences are? The major differences can be summed up as the PR team supports the larger brand of the company and handles press releases, whereas the marketing team supports the sales team and general advertising. Pretty clear cut, right? Wrong. The lines between PR and marketing are quite blurred today, especially when smaller companies are formed, so you are entirely forgiven for any confusion around them.

Today, it can pose a bit of a challenge when trying to figure out where one ends and the other begins. Here is a guided breakdown to help you navigate these two concepts a little better.

Definitions

Public Relations – The duties of a Public Relations team are to maintain a favorable public image of a person, company, or other organization.

Marketing – Through the actions of market research and targeted advertising the Marketing team promoting the selling of products, goods, and/ or services.

With the two concepts laid out clearly like this, it is easy to distinguish a clear line between the two. Moreover, this article breaks it down even further. Marketing is about selling, and PR is about the image. Marketing is there to sense, serve, and satisfy customer needs, while PR is there to produce goodwill among the company’s various publics. Both exist to promote a profitable business.

Now that you have the simple definitions let us delve deeper into the differences and similarities and why it is that so many people think the two are synonymous.

What Is PR?

PR consists of any purposeful communications that take place between the organization and its public in a way that is meant to garner goodwill. Public Relations is one of the major external functions of a business, next to Marketing.

PR, not to be confused with advertising, tends to focus more on maintaining the good reputation of a business in the media.

Most PR jobs can be found in working for a PR team in larger companies, working for a PR consultancy, or you could even find yourself in the position of the sole PR officer working with a general marketing team.

The goal of PR officers is to get the company noticed by the media. Any positive press coverage puts the company in the eye of the public and offers a more subtle, not so in your face, type of promotion.

PR officers are typically tasked with writing press releases, contacting media professionals to inform them of the business’s news, speaking about the business at public forums, writing company magazines and newsletters, etc. They are also expected to perform as a representative in public when the business needs to give a statement or a comment. Below we will go into more detail.

Types of PR

Speeches, presentations, and speech writing

Important figures within a company are expected to present speeches at certain corporate events, public award ceremonies, as well as industry gatherings. PR officials, along with managers and these important figures will often write these speeches together to ensure the best reception of these speeches. They will also be expected to design corporate presentations. These are composed of proposed and coherent strategies to build goodwill with the public. These presentations will eventually be delivered by the business’s executives.

Corporate literature

Corporate literature comprises things such as financial reports, company magazines, brochures, catalogs, price lists, and any other piece of literature originating with corporate. These pieces of literature communicate with a variety of different target audiences. For example, financial reports are of a lot of interest to investors and the stock market. An annual financial report gives the CEO a chance to put a business case to the reader who is composed of the public.

The public is one of the company’s stakeholders. PR is future-orientated and proactively tried to maintain a positive perception of the business in the eyes of its public. This is referred to as goodwill.

Interviews and photo-calls

Executives in the company must be available to create goodwill for their organization. Most go on training that teaches them how to deal with the media as well as how to behave in front of the camera. Interviews with business or mass media allow for a company to relay its own viewpoint on matters that could otherwise be misleading if left to simmer in the public domain.

There are a lot of key industry executive figures that proactively deal with the media. Some well-known examples include Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and Richard Branson founder of the Virgin group. This type of PR tends to have a more immediate business payoff.

Organizing events

Certain activities can have a less direct, or even indirect business payoff. More informal occasions could include a day at the races or a short break abroad to entertain clients at the expense of the business to generate goodwill.

Corporate events are utilized to garner interest from the public in both a formal and an informal manner. A formal event could consist of a manufacturer inviting its employees to visit its manufacturing plant for a day of training.

Sponsorship and charitable donations

The notion of a ‘sponsorship’ refers to the action of an organization paying for their product or service to be related to an activity or event. The company, referred to as the sponsors, will gain exposure and align their product and/or service with the attributes of the event that they have sponsored.

Donations to charities and other good causes are a frequent strategy. When donations are publicized, the benefits generate goodwill for the company.

What Is Marketing?

Marketing is the overall process of boosting public awareness of a product, service, brand, or person.

A marketing team is responsible for the planning of a company’s promotion strategy. From pinpointing the target market, researching the market, setting a marketing budget, putting on product launches, and evaluating the success of the campaign.

Marketing jobs are typically found in large organizations that have an in-house marketing team. You can also find work with marketing agencies that other organizations go to when they need help with marketing.

If you take up a career in this area, your responsibilities could include conducting interviews and market research, coming up with new ideas to market the product content, commissioning advertising, and even creating websites and organizing conferences or exhibitions.

Types of Marketing

Paid advertising

This includes a plethora of different approaches to marketing. It includes traditional approaches like TV commercials and print media advertising to more modern internet marketing tools such as pay per click and paid to advertise.

Cause marketing

Cause marketing ties in with charities. This links the products and services of a company to a social cause or issue. It is also referred to as cause-related marketing.

Relationship marketing

This type of marketing is focused on customer building. Through tools such as membership perks, loyalty cards, competitions, etc., you are able to enhance existing relationships with customers and improving customer loyalty.

Undercover marketing

Also known as stealth marketing, this type of strategy focuses on marketing a product while customers remain unaware. An example of this is product placement in movies. The Coca-Cola company is well known for this.

Word of mouth

One of the earliest marketing techniques, word of mouth is still a very important marketing strategy. Being heard is important in the world of business. Word of mouth is heavily reliant on the impressions you leave on people when you provide good quality services to customers, they let others know and this gives you free promotions. Word of mouth has been considered a crucial marketing technique for quite some time now, as it is one of the few ones that can give some results without any significant investment.

Internet marketing

This is also known as cloud marketing. Typically taking place over the internet, marketing is done across a variety of platforms on the internet and promoted through various platforms through multiple different approaches. Common examples of this are influencers and email marketing.

Transactional marketing

Sales are challenging work. With new marketing strategies, selling a product is not as difficult as it once was. Transactional marketing encourages customers to buy products using shopping coupons, discounts, and during huge events, like Black Friday, or Valentine’s Day. You may also choose to print brochures. This boosts the chances of sales and encourages the target audience to buy the products on promotion.

Diversity marketing

This type of marketing strives to cover multiple different aspects like cultural beliefs, views, attitudes, and other specific needs. It aims to cater to diverse audiences by customizing different marketing strategies.

The Day-to-Day of PR and Marketing

You could expect to find a PR professional doing one or many of the following on any given day:

Writing a press release
Pitching positive stories to the media about upcoming company announcements
Securing speaking opportunities for executives at important industry events
Building relationships with influencers and other industry-related media
Updating and Managing company messaging
Creating talking points for speaking to the press about a company crisis

On that same day, you could expect to find a marketing professional:

Creating new advertising campaigns
Buying advertising slots for campaigns on all relevant media platforms
Creating supporting material for product launches. This includes brochures, webpages, and a list of FAQs for the sales team
Conducting industry and client research to assist marketing campaigns
Drafting a weekly newsletter

As PR manages reputation and engagement, it is much harder to measure the Return on investment. Perceptions are cultivated over time and do not always translate into immediate revenue and sales. It could take months or even years before their efforts reflect.

Marketing is more concerned with the short-term effects on revenue. It is easily and quickly measurable.

Reliability and Longevity

Marketing tactics are not foolproof. Marketing campaigns are much easier to detect than a lot of PR campaigns. Consumers can easily detect advertising campaigns and that is driven by a company’s desire to increase sales and are sometimes put out by this.

PR is neither perfect nor without its drawbacks. It takes time and is not guaranteed to turn a profit. It does, however, have a greater effect. Marketing campaigns are more guaranteed to turn a profit but have far less of a long-term effect.

With marketing, a brand can be certain that when they choose to market their products in a specific way with a specific message, that message will appear exactly where they have paid to place it and exactly when it is scheduled.

PR is dependent on editorial and journalistic needs and integrity. Success is not always guaranteed as campaigns rely on stories and angles that work for editorial teams. This affects the readers’ perception in a far more effective way than through advertisements.

Overlap

PR and marketing have important roles and rely on each other for the success of a business to continue. You cannot really market without doing a bit of PR, and you cannot do PR without a bit of marketing. The end goals of each are very similar, which is why people are often confused. They both aim to sell a product and make people love the company. If the products you sell are terrible, your company will not be viewed in a good light by the public, and if people are not connecting with your brand, they will most likely not buy your products.

And then there are social media, which situates itself firmly in both departments. This has given rise to the new title of “community leader.” One moment you could be dealing with a disgruntled client on Twitter and tweeting a journalist in the next you.

Marketing is considered to be immediate and systematic, while PR is long-term and relationship orientated. While quite different in nature, their goals for the business are very similar. Both strive to generate greater sales and increase the development of the business and the profitability of the brand.