The terms are used almost interchangeably by some people, especially those in the growing social media/blogging for business area of expertise.  So, what exactly is the difference between public relations and marketing?

We think it boils down to the fact that marketing is all about the sale, and while this is (hopefully) an outcome of PR efforts it isn’t necessarily the main goal.   Good PR is based on the idea that any sort of success is derived from a mutual satisfaction between companies and their customers/clients.  This leads to more relationship management and conflict resolution type activities, with the PR person acting as a sort of go between for those involved, fostering goodwill along the way.

Marketing, on the other hand, is focused on the sale and ‘the bottom line’.  Remember those persuasive talks assigned in speech classes?  That’s marketing – it’s more about playing up the good, downplaying the bad, figuring out what people want and how to get them to think they want your product or service.

So why do companies focus so much time and energy on public relations if marketing’s domain is to influence actual sales?  Because when all other factors are equal consumers will buy from the company they like more, the one with the better reputation.  Some have referred to marketing as PR’s evil twin, always focused on the money and sometimes undercutting the efforts of PR – and the line between the two gets blurred when PR people start focusing on ‘image’ and the way a product is presented.

The truth is you need both, and it’s probably a better idea to keep them at least a little separate.  Marketing is essential to any business, it drives sales.  But what happens when a communications-related crisis pops up?  Personally, we’d rather have someone on deck trained in crisis management to do damage control and repair professional relationships than leave the task to a component of our sales force.

What do you think?

Tags: marketing, PR, reputation management, sales

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Guides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.