PR and Marketing – What is the difference?
Aneela explains.

At a recent presentation, I was asked what the difference was between public relations and marketing.

While public relations and marketing are often used together, and are closely related, they are in fact, two separate business activities. At its very heart, marketing has a desire to make its audience think, believe or do what you want. Public relations focuses on influencing reputation, whether personal or corporate.

The two professions clearly complement each other – marketing activity affects a company's reputation, while a positive reputation makes the marketer's job easier.

Businesses with the most effective communications are those that don't get hung up on what's marketing and what's public relations. Instead their work spotlights the most relevant activity for delivering their objectives, regardless of which box it ticks.

If you ever want to infuriate a public relations professional, suggest that public relations is part of marketing.

Marketing is most effective when backed by PR
Marketing works on the four P's: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. More often than not, the main marketing activity is advertising which is more direct and aggressive than PR. Advertising sells services or products where PR centres on reputation giving credibility to the marketing strategy. PR activity can directly affect the success of a marketing campaign. For instance, PR research can determine the type of media the target customer is using so the marketing team can use the most effective advertising material. Some products have failed to sell because they relied solely on advertising to break into the market, without building up a reputation or creating prior knowledge of the company.

PR is better than Marketing
PR uses mass media whereas advertising offers more immediate effects and much greater revenue. However, these effects are usually short-term, and as explained earlier, they need PR to be effective anyway. PR is a cheaper, less visible process, but when properly executed, its effects are long-term and will make marketing cheaper, or at least more efficient, in the long run. Flexibility is another advantage of PR over marketing. Because it's a dynamic process, it's easy to change a message or subject midway through the PR plan. The same applies to skills and resources – an advertising team must consist of competent writers, artists, designers, and media specialists, while a PR practitioner is well versed, though not necessarily an expert, in all fields.

PR professionals are like Chameleons adapting easily to different situations. We absorb and learn everything possible about our clients business. This is certainly true of the team at Aneela Rose PR.