Sometimes there can be a bit of confusion as to where marketing and PR meet. Is PR a form of marketing? Is PR part of marketing? Or is PR totally separate to marketing?
Probably a good place to start is with the traditional definitions of both terms.
Marketing is “the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.”
Public Relations or PR is “the professional maintenance of a favourable public image by a company, other organization, or famous person.”
So, if we use these definitions, we could say that while marketing is about promoting and selling specific products, PR is about making sure the company selling these products has a good level of visibility and a positive reputation in their target market.
However, whereas once the two disciplines were kept separate, today the lines between them have blurred completely, particularly given the increasing dual role social media now plays in reputation building and promotion.
Marketing and PR can no longer be viewed as mutually exclusive; they are symbiotic, totally reliant on each other and equally important in terms of forming and effective and penetrative communication strategy.
Why does PR need to be part of your marketing strategy?
Marketing is really just the line that joins what you have with who should want to buy it. Done properly, marketing creates awareness, interest, desire, and action. It boosts public awareness of your products, services, and people.
However, this process will always be easier if people know you and are well disposed towards you. This is where PR comes in. An effective PR strategy will warm up your audience, it’ll get you noticed, it’ll make people think positively about you which subliminally will push you in front of your competitors so that when the time comes to buy, you will be their preference.
PR also acts as a constant reminder. You want your target markets to repeatedly see you quoted or writing articles in the publications they read or read and hear other people talking positively about you. It will keep you front of mind and again put you in pole position when it becomes time to buy.
So is PR a form of marketing? Not for us. It’s part of marketing.
If you’d like to discuss how you can use PR, social media and marketing to boost your profile, create goodwill in your target markets and put you in pole position when the time comes to buy products and services like yours, please get in touch.