The conflict between PR and marketing is a common issue that businesses face when they have teams with different goals and targets.
One side is tasked with managing good relationships with audiences and enhancing a business's reputation. The other side is sales driven and has more quantifiable KPIs to meet.
Successful PR and marketing departments marry their goals together in a single strategy. Yet, this isn't always easy to oversee.
It takes strong management to ensure both sides of your business's external communications work in tandem with each other.
Get the integration right, and you can build brand awareness while also driving revenue.
Preventing PR vs Marketing Conflicts
This guide aims to outline the difference between public relations and marketing, so you can see how communications and commercial teams should operate.
We'll look at the goals of PR and how they match and don't match with those of marketing.
In This Guide
What Is Public Relations?
What Is Marketing?
PR Vs. Marketing Conflicts
Integrating PR and Marketing
Measuring Success
We'll also look at some marketing and PR case studies to highlight how the two departments can work together.
But before that, let's start with the basics.
What Is Public Relations?
Public relations is about building and maintaining a positive reputation for your company. You need to manage your organization's communications and relationships with stakeholders, including consumers, investors, and the media.
In PR, you're aiming to create a positive image, generate trust, and establish credibility to attract and retain customers.
This contrasts with marketing, which focuses on promoting products or services.
PR aims to build and maintain a positive perception of your organization through various communication channels.
Goals of PR
The idea of "generating good PR" is ever-present across business. If you don't have good public relations, it's almost impossible to get your message out there.
The core goal is to generate positive publicity through interesting stories, products, and services that the media – and therefore your audience – want to know about.
For example, a women's soccer club that rewrites its maternity policy to be the best in the league will shout about it, and generate attention through positive public relations.
Other goals of PR include establishing and maintaining strong relationships with customers, investors, and partners through continuous engagement. This aligns with another aspect of PR, which is reputation management. A top PR professional needs to be aware when a small issue could become a reputational disaster.
Strategies and Tactics for PR Professionals
There are some fairly simple methods PR professionals use to achieve successful outcomes. Remember, unlike in marketing, a PR campaign is about generating interest in a brand and protecting its reputation through positive press.
Press releases and attending industry events form the backbone of PR tasks. Public relations teams are required to handle stories with press releases and social media messaging. It's then part of a PR employee's job to meet stakeholders and maintain their brand's relationship.
Some might think this level of "schmoozing" is disingenuous, but it's part of how PR teams work.
Of course, PR professionals also have to do the background research and analysis into a business's entire network. Whether it's clients, suppliers, publications, or investors, it's a PR pro's job to know what relationships could enhance or damage the company's reputation.
For example, a coffee producer's marketing department might strike a new commercial deal with a high-profile influencer. The PR pro, though, will need to check if the influencer has any potentially damaging past relationships with the coffee industry. Perhaps they had a previous sponsorship agreement with a rival coffee company that was exposed for malpractice. Both marketing and public relations need to work out whether the influencer is worth working with.
What Is Marketing?
Let's now look at the other side of the coin. Marketing is about promoting products and services directly to target audiences. It involves identifying consumer needs, developing strategies to meet those needs, and persuading consumers to choose your offerings over those of competitors.
It seeks to drive sales and grow the business through various campaigns and tactics.
Marketing focuses on building strong relationships with customers, aiming to persuade and influence their buying decisions.
Market research, product development, branding, advertising, and sales all come under the marketing umbrella.
Goals of Marketing
Whereas PR is about generating and protecting an organization's reputation, marketing is more proactive in its approach, in order to drive sales.
It starts with creating awareness of a brand, product, or service, and then engaging with audiences or potential customers to transform that awareness into conversions.
Conversions hopefully lead to retentions, which is where a marketing professional really shows their value.
These goals can be achieved with the help of a well-coordinated marketing team, which typically includes market researchers, strategists, content creators, digital marketing specialists, and sales representatives.
Where Marketing Happens
There are various marketing channels and activities that pros use when promoting and selling products, or raising awareness of a brand.
Traditionally, marketing was done via print advertising, radio commercials, billboards, and direct mail. However, over the last two decades, departments have had to cater for digital advertising and social media marketing too.
Marketing and advertising campaigns often come with a strategy that covers all the bases. That's a lot more work, but it can be worth it.
PR Vs. Marketing Conflicts
Now it's time to look at where the PR vs. marketing clashes happen. Below are two examples of conflicts that can arise when the two sides don't align.
Awareness or Sales? What's the Focus?
If a business lacks a content marketing or public relations strategy, then there can quickly be confusion over what to focus on. Say a German car manufacturer wants to enter the U.S. market. A PR agency would argue branding is the most important thing to provide a bedrock of awareness for the brand. It would suggest running positive stories about its arrival in the U.S.
A marketing professional may suggest the initial focus should be on launching a car across the country and driving sales fast.
While marketing comprises on attracting immediate attention for sales, PR leans towards softer influence and growing brand reputation steadily. The car manufacturer needs to consider what its communication strategy is.
When a Crisis Hits
PR strategies need to include crisis management plans to protect brand reputation. Marketing teams have to be included across the plan, but aren't usually the ones who implement it when the crisis hits.
Say a phone company suffers a major public relations disaster after its products are recalled. The marketing team might want to help, but it's the PR department that has to dive into action.
PR teams will work the phones, send emails, speak to publications, and generally act as press officers to keep bad stories down to a minimum. It's also possible they'll have to row back on pledges made in past marketing campaigns, such as our aforementioned phone company marketing itself as a cheap, durable alternative to the iPhone.
Recommended Reading: How PR Pros Can Think More Like Marketers
Integrating PR and Marketing
PR vs. marketing doesn't have to be a competition that clashes within your organization. Manage the departments right, and they can work well to deliver successful PR campaign plans, and money-generating marketing campaigns, time after time.
Balancing PR and Marketing Objectives
Effectively integrating PR and marketing requires you to balance your objectives. PR focuses on building relationships with key stakeholders and maintaining a positive reputation for your company, while marketing aims to directly increase sales and customer loyalty.
So, for every marketing push the sales team puts forward, they need to have eyes on how this can increase brand awareness and reputation. Likewise, for every PR strategy that seeks to place good news stories in publications that appeal to their target audience, public relations managers need to understand how that could affect the marketing team.
Cross-Functional Coordination
For nearly a decade, small businesses have recognized the importance of cross-functional coordination among their PR and marketing teams.
This collaboration ensures that your business delivers consistent messages to different audiences and enhances your overall presence.
Some simple ways to do it include:
Collaborate on content creation: Your PR and marketing teams should work together to create content that appeals to your target audience and promotes your products or services, while also fostering positive perceptions.
Share metrics: Both PR and marketing teams should regularly review and share the metrics measured, such as engagement, reach, and conversions, to ensure a comprehensive understanding of how your overall strategy is performing. You can do this with a tool like CisionOne.
Assemble project teams: When planning campaigns or product launches, include members from both PR and marketing teams to ensure seamless integration and alignment of goals.
Measuring Success
The last part of our guide focuses on what success looks like for a PR team, and what marketers hope to achieve. Unless you align both sides, their KPIs can be very different.
Success Metrics for PR
Impact is the big metric for PR teams. If they can establish positive relationships with the media and generate hype for their brand, they've nailed their goals.
Whether it's through sending press releases, engaging with the local community, working with trade publications, or responding to crises on social media, a PR professional is judged on the reputation of their organization.
Tangible metrics include:
Total number of media placements: Tracking the mentions and features of your brand in traditional and digital media channels. A consistent and widespread presence in the media signals a positive image.
Share of voice: Comparing your media presence with that of your competitors to measure the prominence of your brand in the industry. This helps you understand your relative position and influence within your target market.
Success Metrics for Marketing
The main difference for marketing metrics is return on investment, which is crucial whether you're a small business or global corporation. These metrics are money-related and focus on selling products, advertising, running client research, and assessing the competition.
Key success metrics for marketers include:
Lead generation: Keeping track of how many potential customers have shown an interest in your products or services. Leads can be generated through various marketing activities such as email campaigns, online advertising, and content marketing.
Conversion rate: Measuring the proportion of leads who converted into actual customers is crucial. A high conversion rate signifies that your marketing strategies effectively turn interested prospects into paying clients.
ROI: Comparing the costs of a marketing campaign with the total revenue it generated to measure your ROI. A positive ROI indicates that your campaign was a successful investment.
