Marketing and Public Relations (PR) are the same, right? Nope. They are in the same family, but they’re not the same thing. They both work very well together, but if you’re looking to implement a communications plan, they work very differently. Let’s take a closer look.
Marketing is the business of promoting and selling your organization’s products or services. When you market your product, you’ll do market research to see what the consumer wants and needs, and as a result, you advertise to your audience. Marketing is truly a mixed bag of communications tools used to sell your product.
PR is more about the relationship, not the selling of goods. PR is strategic communications between your organization and its publics. “Publics” entail internal and external, so your organization has its employees, a board, stakeholders, the Christian public (if you’re a Christian-based organization), and the general public. Depending on your organization, you may have other publics you must communicate with. And PR is the way to communicate that is mutually beneficial to both parties.
Marketing and PR working together yield phenomenal results. The market research and analysis that comes with marketing your product and PR’s relationship building allows you to freely communicate within the marketplace, build trust, and ultimately achieve acceptance or buy-in from your market. When the two work together, you and your organization become part of your target market’s family. Now, isn’t that where we all want to be?
