What’s the difference between PR and marketing?
“Publicity is absolutely critical. A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front-page ad." Richard Branson.
Simply put, the difference between public relations (PR) and marketing is as follows:
- PR is focused on delivering strategic, tactical and routine messages to stakeholders in order to create, enhance and protect the positive reputation of your company as a whole. The goal is trust.
- Marketing is focused on promoting the specific features and benefits of your product or service to customers for the purpose of generating sales. The goal is revenue.
PR raises your profile and achieves recognition, status and access in the market for your people, your company (or brand) and your product. In this way PR is an indirect channel, whereas marketing is a direct channel, to sales revenue.
PR and marketing are highly complementary and can overlap. PR pros frequently work collaboratively with marketers, advertisers and content creators, which possibly adds to the confusion here, however, there is a distinct difference in the scope and also the skills used to achieve the end results.
PR is broader in its remit; marketing is narrower.
PR works with the currency of influence; marketing works with the currency of the P&L.
PR typically focuses on earned and owned media channels rather than paid, that’s to say we target opportunities like speaking engagements and news stories, and we also use EDMs and social media. Marketing typically focuses on paid channels like advertising, sponsorship, market research, focus groups and give-aways.
The superpower that underpins PR is the power to harness facts and narratives, comments and opinions, to exert influence on people, even to the point of changing their minds. PR messages tend to be educational and positionally persuasive e.g. the story of the founder’s journey, winning an award, thought leadership. Success can be hard to measure with hard metrics and results are borne over the long term.
You tend to know who has good PR ... and who doesn't.
Marketing’s superpower is the power to harness a call to action to get people to purchase. Success is generally measured by increased sales revenue and can be realised in the short term.
PR pros are wired to the possibilities that your messages could be vulnerable to mis-interpretation, complaint, attack and political appropriation. We are trained in crisis communications and often support companies through large transactions like IPOs and takeovers and important transformations like CEO change, litigation and insolvency.
Public Relations is the art of getting someone else to say you’re good … without paying them to say it.
Most of the time, however, good PR is the result of small things done regularly and done well. Like posting on social media, speaking at industry events, sending out that newsletter and writing that media release or blog.
Every business needs a PR strategy. Why? Because PR is your voice. And if you don’t shape your stakeholders’ opinions of you, someone else will.
Jennifer Harrison is a Director at Reputation Edge, a boutique public relations and communications agency based in Sydney, Australia.
