According to experienced career services professional Jennifer Herrity’s article on Indeed, it has gotten harder for people to differentiate the functions of marketing and public relations throughout the years.
Understandable! Marketing & PR are basically inseparable. Always working together.
But for your brand, which will work best: one or the other, or can you harness the power of two?
Understanding the difference between the functions of marketing and PR helps in maximizing their use to keep your business going strong. In this article, you’ll find out how the two compliment each other to create a great impact for your organization!
Here are the important things to take note of about marketing, public relations, and why your brand or company may need both of them.
What are the functions of marketing and PR?
It’s easy to confuse marketing with PR because they have similar goals. In the words of the U.S. Chamber of Commerse, “public relations and marketing have different objectives, but there are some inevitable overlaps between the two departments.” But if you scrutinize their roles, you’ll see that marketing is more focused on bolstering business bottomline, while PR majors in making sure the important facets of that business are communicated to the people that matter to the betterment of the organizations.
Related: Why Communications Are Vital for Organizations
Marketing is responsible for hyping up the products or services offered by your brand. Working hand in hand with sales teams, marketing teams are synonymous to vendors – they use various practices to peddle products and services to the public. They focus on attracting consumers, increasing sales, and bringing in more revenue to the company.
Sending email newsletters to inform existing customers and posting on social media to attract new consumers are some examples of marketing tactics that a marketing team employ to garner leads and sales.
Public relations, on the other hand, rake in customers and partners by establishing trust. A PR team capitalizes on strategic communication to attract consumers and partnerships in organic ways. They are responsible for networking with other brands and influencers as well as building the trust of the audience by addressing their needs.
PR teams encourage brand leaders to partake in interviews, create press releases for the brand, and produce guest posts to promote the organization and its products or services.
Related: 5 Best Digital PR Practices in 2023
The tl;dr (Too Long; Didn’t Read) version is this: Marketing teams make sure people will buy your products and services, while PR teams ensure they will trust your brand enough to keep consuming the products and services your brand offers.
Now that we know the differences, how do they work together?
How Marketing and Public Relations Work Together
Marketing and public relations are twin fates. Since they both have similar goals, it’s natural that their functions go hand-in-hand. Here are 3 ways marketing and PR work together to ensure an organization’s success.
- Marketing steps up to attract possible customers and partners while PR builds consumer confidence towards the brand.
Once your marketing team managers to hook new customers in, your PR team works hard to keep their attention and interest in your products and services.
- Marketing creates demand while PR increases trust and awareness.
Marketing attracts the customers, PR courts them into committing to the brand and whatever it offers. For example, if your company’s after sales service – such as product inquiries – is handled well by your PR team, it can help you keep your customers.
- Marketing makes sure established brands remain relevant while PR keeps the brands’ consistency.
Here, public relations will usually come first before marketing. In fact, good PR is needed even when the company has just been established. This is because marketing mainly works with the products and services produced, while PR is concerned with the people of the company, their target audience, as well as the relationships with fellow organizations. You products and services can change, but your brand’s reputation is forever – even if you rebrand over and over again.
While marketing handles business and sales, PR is busy maintaining the company’s good image and building stable relationships with the public.
- Marketing talks while PR create conversations and connects your stories.
Often, marketing appears to be a one-way communication because consumers are just there to receive the information about the brand and what they offer. In PR, consumers feedbacks and complaints are addressed, and strategies are usually tweaked in favour of that feedback. The latter also helps in letting the marketing team and the brand in general which parts they should improve on.
So, do you really need both marketing and PR in your company?
Why Organizations Should Have Marketing and PR
If we have not made it clear: yes, you do need to have both marketing and PR teams in your company. Having dedicated teams working on each strategy and ensuring that they work in synergy will be a major key factor to business success.
The work of public relations and marketing are always important for an organization to succeed. These two work closely to create an impact better than if organizations only utilizes marketing alone or PR alone.
In the Philippines, it is more common for companies to have a sales and marketing department working together (or having the same team fulfilling both roles). PR teams are not so common. If you’re a believer in the power of PR to bolster the good work that your marketing team is already doing but you feel like you want to test out the effectivity of PR for your brand without committing to a full team, you may still want a team of experts on the case. Considering partnering with a digital PR agency in the Philippines.
PRO TIP: A good public relations agency will be able to work with your existing marketing strategies, and give recommendations and best courses of action based on ear-to–the-ground tactics that harmonize both what your customers want and what your brand ultimately wants to achieve. This agency should also be able to share your visions and values. It may sound sentimental, but that is the work of PR – to make sure that the messages you put out are more human that just your ordinary marketing campaign. The PR agency you will want to work with is one that creates personalized, purposeful, and effective campaigns.
Jossaine Nunez is a freelance article writer, blogger, and SEO-driven maven. While her true passion lies in writing fiction, her love for storytelling extends to helping brands convey their message in ways that are both engaging and helpful for attaining their business goals.
Jossaine’s interests in writing particularly about people, for people – which translates to brand audience engagement – stems from her experience as the Editor-In-Chief of Siliman University’s The Weekly Silimanian, which published slices of life and educational pieces surrounding university life. Her piece, A Review of Leoncio Deriada’s People on Guerrero Street, published in the Silliman Journal on discussions and investigations in the humanities and sciences, earmarks her foray into the world of writing about, and writing for, humans that make the world go round.
