How Marketing and Public Relations Differ: There is a thin line between marketing and public relations that is, most times, crossed by those practicing in these respective fields. But how do the two differ? Both these fields have distinct disciplines, and this is irrespective of what point their objectives, goals and strategies share similarities.

For more clarity on these two disciplines, note that marketing is concerned with the selling of the company’s products and services through communication and promotional strategies. PR, on the other hand, deals with upholding the image of the brand, company or employee through communication strategies.

Here is a guide on how best to utilize PR to achieve your marketing goals and boost your company’s objectives through communication strategies:

Marketing and PR Goals

The goal of a PR strategy is to ensure that the brand, company or employee in question maintains a good public image, using means of traditional or alternative media channels to communicate with their audience, as well as those with a vested interest in the company.

Marketing is aimed at compelling a specified target market to buy the company’s products using the same media channels as PR does. Marketing also makes use of sales figures in order to measure how effective or ineffective its strategies have been.

PR and Marketing’s Daily Strategies

The following are tasks that PR personnel engage in on any given day:

· Oversee communication material from company

· Develop messages for the media

· Maintain an employee or company’s positive image via media engagements

· Book public engagement events

· Maintain media relations for the company

PR agencies are also instrumental in developing either a communication strategy where needed, or a strategy to handle any crisis at hand.

Marketing personnel are often tasked with the following daily responsibilities:

· Developing and overseeing an advertising campaign

· Booking or buying advertising space on traditional media and digital platforms

· Run surveys to aid market campaign objectives

· Develop marketing communiqué through web and digital content, sales proposals, product or service debut, advertorials, leaflets and more

· Being a custodian of the brand’s image and online presence

Observed Milestones

In order to assess the progress of their efforts, PR personnel will:

· Make a note of the positive outcome of their outreach online as well as communications efforts carried out on traditional media

· Assess the number of accolades won from media related events

· Measure the hype created by their social media presence, from their opinion leaders, content creators and the general public

· Observe the amount of positive opinion when compared to the negative

If you are interested in measuring your PR campaign, read our blog 14 proven PR KPIs. In this blog we address what to look for when measuring your results and how to track them.

Success for marketing personnel on the other hand can be measured by:

· Whether the sales recorded for that particular marketed product or service reached its sales goals

· Measuring whether the marketing activities prescribed by the marketing strategy and campaign will be effectively profitable

· Is there an increased interest in the market or higher volumes of online traffic for the marketed product or service? Did the marketing team successfully boost social media followers using information from other communications channels?

Target Audiences

Ordinarily, PR and marketing audiences differ meaning that the resulting communiqué from both departments would differ.

· Public relations generally reaches out to a wider audience. People in this department may use personalised or campaign-based techniques to reach out to the company’s stakeholders which include consumers, suppliers, the media and staff alike. PR teams can concurrently develop personalized communication material for equity holders while developing a press release for the general public.

· Marketing also has a wide target audience since they could either be outreaching to customers or potential customers if PR is involved in communicating with internal staff. The marketing personnel may carry out ABM, digital advertising or email marketing through segmentation or specified communication of either potential customers or those that the company already sells to.

The Point at Which PR and Marketing Meet

While there are distinct differences between PR and marketing, the two disciplines cannot work in isolation. For more success in today’s diverse media world, both departments need to work in unison.

Below is a clear example of how both PR and marketing correlate:

For more robust brand awareness for your product or service, you need to boost your brand reputation in the eyes of your consumers by maintaining your relationship with them. By so doing, you will in turn boost your sales figures. You can utilize public relations and marketing to collaborate to optimize brand awareness by organizing media launches for your product or services, then developing adverts that will be placed along with the press.

Increasingly, it’s been found that both social media and opinion leader marketing can both be overseen by either the PR or marketing team. Both vehicles can be utilized in disseminating communiqué geared around boosting the brand’s image and for specific adverts.

While a focused effort needs to be put in by both PR and marketing to achieve unified communication goals, ensuring that the strategies from both departments are aligned is a plus. This makes for enhanced content dissemination through the channels, increased chances for optimization, the distribution of messages for building the brand and ensuring its consistency.

Get in touch with our team to find out more about how we can help your brand.