Is there really a difference between Marketing and PR?
The answer is both yes and no.
Yes, there is a difference in the manner in which marketing and public relations professionals look at an issue. Marketers tend to focus on the 4 P’s (product, price, place, promotion), target market, and ROI. PR professionals focus on building relationships with people, hence the ‘relations’ in public relations.
Marketers focus on what is the object or cause du jour and who specifically will want it. How they will tell them about it, where they will convey the information and what the call to act is (either purchase or support). Marketers focus on the return on investment and are concerned about the budget and through the budget the bottom line of the organization.
Public relations is focused on building relationships with key stakeholders (which can be the public). They have a cause du jour and come up with press releases, news releases, media releases, newsletters, blog posts, social media tweets/posts/items, events, etc. to send their message to specific key stakeholder.
In many organizations these functions are separate, marketers do marketing and PR does relationship building.
But are they really so different?
Marketing might involve advertising and product launches and PR creates media relations events and social media entries. But, really both groups are using different tactics to do the same function:
Convey meaning
