PR vs. Marketing: Understanding the Difference

In the constantly evolving landscape of business communication, two ideas often get mistaken for one another: public relations (PR) and marketing.  

While both professions work to enhance an organization’s reputation, they operate within different frameworks. Being able to understand the differences is important for a company to effectively connect with its audiences.  

There are a few distinctions to establish to understand the difference: 

• Definitions and objectives 

• Target audience 

• Messaging 

• Metrics of success 

Definitions and Objectives 

Public relations’ focus is to manage the relationship between an organization and its various external stakeholders, including the public, the news media, and investors. Its primary goal is to build and protect a company’s image and foster goodwill in the public sphere. PR professionals can achieve this in many ways including:  

• Writing and issuing press releases 

• Cultivating proactive media relations  

• Securing earned media coverage 

• Communicating to potential and current investors 

• Developing community engagement 

Marketing primarily focuses on promoting a product or a service to increase sales and meet revenue goals through mostly paid methods, such as advertising. Marketing professionals identify customer needs through market research and make sure they can be met through advertising and other sales strategies. 

The key to understanding one of the primary differences is that PR focuses on earned (or unpaid) media attention. Marketing efforts tend to focus on paid methods for raising awareness, building brand reputation, or driving leads.  

Target Audience 

An important distinction between PR and marketing lies within their target audiences.  

PR professionals’ primary audience is reporters and journalists. The secondary, or indirect audiences, are readers, viewers, and listeners of earned media outlets:  

• Television, print, and radio news 

• Online news publications 

• Podcasts 

PR aims to create a positive public perception among the consumers of these outlets by working with media outlets and their employees (reporters, editors, producers). These consumers of news can be made up of customers, clients, community members, investors, shareholders, elected officials, and regulatory agencies.  

Marketing, on the other hand, focuses more on current and potential customers. Effective marketing strategies focus on understanding the needs, preferences, and behaviors of these audiences to create targeted campaigns that drive engagement, loyalty, and sales. These audiences are often reached through paid marketing efforts.  

Messaging  

Another important distinction is the type of messaging leveraged by PR and marketing experts.  

The messaging emphasized by PR can vary, depending on the needs of the client. But fundamentally, PR messaging focuses on fostering a positive public perception of a client or company among the relevant audiences. Sometimes this means playing defense, which is often referred to as crisis communications. But the goal is still the same: to introduce, reinforce, or protect a positive message in earned media outlets and their audiences.  

As marketing is more focused on promoting a certain product, service, or business to drive sales, they are more focused on relaying how customers will benefit from what the organization has to offer. Because of that, marketing messaging is more direct, as they try to grow awareness, encourage consideration of a service, product, or company, drive conversions, and maintain customer loyalty.  

But at their core, both PR and marketing focus on engendering favorable impressions of a brand, company, or product.  

Metrics of Success 

Measuring success can also vary when it comes to PR and marketing.  

PR can measure success by: 

• Tracking the volume and quantity of media coverage 

• Measuring the impressions and reach of these stories 

• Calculating the tone or sentiment of media coverage 

• Gauging public perception and brand reputation 

• Comparing share of voice in the media versus competitors 

• Monitoring increases in online metrics, such as social media followers, search volume around branded keywords, or spikes in website traffic that can be catalyzed by earned media 

In marketing, one typically measures success through: 

• Sales 

• New leads 

• Conversion rates 

• Click-through-rates (CTRs) 

• Social media followers and engagement 

• Website Traffic 

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC) 

Overlap between PR and Marketing 

A final key to understanding the differences between PR and marketing is appreciating how the two disciplines complement, influence, and reinforce each other.  

For example, earned media provides excellent content for social media channels and websites. At the same time, sharing such news stories helps amplify the impact of positive media coverage.  

In addition, news content can lead to online searches for an organization’s brand name, its products, or its SMEs (whose names are effectively branded search terms). So earned media is one of the best ways to improve awareness and credibility for a business and drive engaged and interested users to your website via organic search from websites like Google or Bing. 

Social media, part of digital marketing, can help identify potential reputational problems for a brand before it spills over into a full-blown media crisis. At the same time, any crisis communications planning by a PR professional should also include consideration of how to manage crises online, especially in social media.  

Conclusion 

Public relations and marketing serve different yet overlapping and complementary purposes in a business’s communication plans. By understanding each one’s objectives, target audiences, messaging, and metrics of success, companies can leverage both tools effectively to grow and protect their business.   

Thanks to Pierpont intern Darby Vrba for assisting with researching and drafting this blog post.