Our intern Jordyn takes a look at the differences between Public Relations and Marketing in this week’s blog post.

Public Relations V Marketing

This is a common question that often arises and to put it simply, an answer that comes with multiple layers, therefore deserving a better explanation.

Public relations holds various definitions, however, it could be referred to as “deepening the connection an entity has with people who matter most to the businesses success”. In other words, PR is all about establishing, growing and maintaining reputation. Marketing, on the other hand, to put it bluntly, is about ‘’selling stuff’’.  

That said, there will always be crossover within public relations and marketing. Marketers still place importance on reputation while PR people are also interested in selling stuff. However, some marketers will still put sales ahead of reputation just as a portion of PR people will put reputation ahead of sales.

By way of comparison, the corporate communication side of PR tends to be more long-term in nature and more focused on building relationships with businesses. This might include functions for managing issues, communication corporate initiatives and building relationships with stakeholders. Importantly, there is always likely to be corporate and marketing crossover communication activities.

To generalise the two, marketers prefer pushing one-way promotional messages directly to consumers whereas, PR people prefer sparking conversation through a two-way engagement directly to consumers as well as third-party influencers.

All that aside, marketers will often hire PR people to add value to a campaign but in some organisations, PR will lead the way.

The inspiration for this post came from: 

https://www.smartcompany.com.au/marketing/the-differences-between-pr-and-marketing/?utm_campaign=SUS&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter