Most people understand the distinction between PR and marketing. In the average organization, these are two separate functions run by two different teams. More often than not, publicists and marketers use distinct strategies and approaches to executing their respective goals.
At the same time, sussing out exactly how they diverge from each other can be trickier than it seems. This is especially true for new businesses (or those undergoing renovations) looking to understand which teams they budget for and focus on building out.
The short answer? Typically, marketing is regarded as a way to generate leads for a company, while PR is about influencing consumers’ perceptions of the company as a whole.
What is PR?
The Public Relations Society of America defines public relations as a “strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”2
In other words, the goal of a PR specialist is to build brand recognition and help people like and connect with a company more. PR campaigns and efforts might be dedicated to:3
- Kindling conversation or excitement around a forthcoming new product.
- Relaying information about an organization’s finances to investors, stockholders and financial stakeholders.
- Building transparency by communicating information between teams and higher-level executives of an organization.
- Crisis communications, where publicists help an organization regain public trust in the wake of a crisis or loss of credibility.
With this in mind, consider anything that a company does to influence or shape the public (and sometimes internal) perception of PR.
What does a PR team do?
Publicists like to say they wear many hats, which is a quippy way of explaining their versatile workload. On any given day, a publicist might be called on to:
- Write a press release.
- Arrange a speaking event.
- Organize a press event.
- Network with media professionals.
- Engage with a local community through non-profit work.
Of course, none of this work directly generates sales. Yet, if they’re performing well behind the scenes, when it’s time to make a purchase, PR can help sway a potential customer with the positive sentiment they’ve helped influence through a long-term PR strategy.
What is marketing?
The goal of marketing is to draw on a combination of marketing strategy and creativity to ensure that people who might need a company’s products, or services know about them in the first place. Their overarching goal is to connect a business with its target audience and build an ongoing, mutually beneficial relationship with them.
With that, marketers have the ability to add all kinds of demographic information to better understand their target audience. Some pertinent factors that may influence buying decisions include:
- Age.
- Gender.
- Location.
- Education level.
- Profession.
- Interests and hobbies.
The more information you have about your audience, the easier it is to find them and promote products and services to them (easier said than done).
What does a marketing team do?
Like publicists, marketers need to perform a variety of different functions in order to be successful. Some key tasks that a marketing team executes include:
- Establishing an integrated marketing strategy
- Web development and CRO
- Developing a paid and programmatic strategy
- Organic social
- Reporting
- Etc.
PR vs marketing: key metrics
Every trade has its tools for measuring performance, and professions PR and marketing, both of which are geared towards storytelling, are no exception.
Marketing professionals often look towards data on acquisition to gauge their performance, which could include:
- New leads.
- Email signups.
- Conversions.
- Revenue.
On the other hand, it’s commonly said that success in PR is notoriously difficult to gauge. Even so, those in the field typically focus on:
- Media outlet mentions and hits.
- Shares on social media.
- Website traffic.
- Digital impressions.
In addition to quantitative measurements, PR professionals assess their work qualitatively by looking at the value of their relationships and contacts in the media landscape. They may also take a look at marketing data to see whether their efforts are registering with marketing ROI.4
PR vs marketing: time frames
There’s an old saying that everything worth having takes time. A publicist probably wrote that.
In PR, nothing happens overnight. Crafting a PR strategy, networking with journalists, and educating the general public on the nuances of who a company is can take months, if not years. Enduring positive associations with a brand build up over time, in large part thanks to favorable media mentions secured by PR professionals, which are often the result of relationships.
Marketing, on the other hand, can have both a long-term and a more instantaneous quality. Stats on email signups and purchases can be measured instantly, and many types of campaigns operate as sprints with short-term goals that take a few weeks or months to complete.
At the same time, marketing teams’ “micro-goals” ideally foster an enduring foundation of trust and mutual benefit between brand and consumer. In this way, PR and marketing work in lockstep towards a common goal.
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