Marketing and PR – what is it and what is the difference?

Marketing and PR are related, but different areas. Marketing works on demand and sales, while PR works on trust, reputation, and the brand's relationship with the audience. Advertising is usually considered as a part of marketing: it helps to get the message across quickly and strengthen the promotion. At the same time, complex work brings the greatest effect when PR creates a strong brand, marketing generates demand, and advertising gives the final push to purchase.

Marketing and PR often go side by side, but they are responsible for different tasks. Marketing helps a brand to find its audience, understand its needs, package the product and bring the person to the purchase. PR, or public relations, works with the perception of a brand: it creates trust, recognition, a stable image of the company and its presence in the information field.

Quite simply, marketing answers the question «How to sell?», and PR answers the question «How to build a good attitude towards the brand?». Marketing looks at the product, demand, promotion channels, and sales results. PR looks wider: how they talk about the company, what meanings they associate with it, how much they believe in it, and whether they are ready to recommend it. That is why PR is not just an addition to marketing, but a separate area of communication.

At the same time, it is important to understand that there are different tools inside marketing, and advertising is one of them. Advertising is needed to quickly draw attention to a product, message, or promotion. It works well for reach and response, but by itself it is not a substitute for either marketing strategy or PR. Marketing determines exactly what needs to be said, to whom and why, advertising helps to convey this message, and PR strengthens trust, without which promotion often does not work.

The difference between marketing and PR is especially noticeable by metrics. Marketing activities and advertising are evaluated through leads, sales, conversion, customer acquisition cost, and return on investment. PR is measured through media mentions, publication tone, reach, voice share, recognition, and trust level. That is, marketing is more often responsible for direct commercial results, while PR is responsible for reputational capital, which affects the business for a long time.

If we talk about marketing tools, these are advertising campaigns, performance channels, email newsletters, funnel analytics, landing pages, special offers and content that leads to action. PR has media publications, expert comments, work with bloggers and opinion leaders (native formats and collaborations, not advertising inserts), creative special PR projects, events, anti–crisis communications and content to build an agenda and trust. Both areas may use similar platforms, but their purpose is different: marketing is aimed at directly stimulating purchase, PR helps the brand to take a place in the mind and heart of the consumer.

In practice, these areas work best together. Marketing leads to attention and demand, PR makes the brand more understandable and convincing, and advertising helps to quickly reinforce the desired message. If you look through the PESO integrated communications model, then Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned channels do not compete with each other, but rather form a single system. It is in this combination that the brand receives not just a flow of contacts, but stable and logical communication with its audience.