Public Relations vs. Marketing: The Differences Explained

Sometimes, ads can only take you so far. Energy drink Red Bull is known for blanketing consumers with commercials featuring its trademark slogan, Red Bull gives you wings. But when it came time to really make an impression, the brand relied on a different approach altogether.

In 2012, Felix Baumgartner captivated the world during Red Bull Stratos, a skydiving project that saw the Austrian skydiver jumping out of a helium balloon from roughly 24 miles above New Mexico. Red Bull’s stunt racked up 8 million livestream views — at the time making it the most-watched livestream ever. With sales spiking up 6% over the ensuing six months, Red Bull Stratos offered clear proof of the power of a critical business tool: public relations.

Keep reading to learn more about public relations, how it’s different from marketing, and how your organization can use the two together to improve business outcomes.

What is public relations?

Public relations (PR) is the process of building and maintaining a positive relationship between a brand and its customers. It’s storytelling — just with a purpose. PR teams are laser-focused on communicating the right messages to the right audience through a variety of channels, including media, social platforms, and events like Baumgartner’s stratospheric skydive.

Today’s smartest brands are investing heavily in PR because it shapes the way the public views their organization. With 62% of consumers, 74% of employees, and 93% of investors all agreeing that a company’s reputation is “very important” in influencing their decisions, brands need to prioritize PR to drive revenue, win the war for talent, and attract capital.

Source: USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations

On the flipside, PR can also be a lifesaver when the going gets tough. When something bad happens to an organization, PR teams can step in to proactively address concerns and talk about the steps being taken to remedy the situation.

While PR can’t erase problems, good PR can certainly soften their impact. That said, bad PR can make problems even worse. Just ask BP, which famously dropped the ball with a suboptimal response to 2010’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. To avoid a similar fate, organizations should strongly consider joining forces with an experienced PR agency that has navigated choppy waters before.

What is marketing?

While related to PR, marketing involves promoting and sharing what your company offers — whether it’s a product, service, or idea — with your target audience. It’s about understanding your customers, knowing what’s important to them, and creating messaging and creative that communicates your value and builds a connection.

When it boils down to it, marketing combines creativity with strategy. Marketing teams research the market, create multi-channel campaigns they think will resonate, measure their impact, and use performance data to optimize the next campaign.

PR centers on managing an organization’s reputation and building positive relationships with various stakeholders, including journalists, customers, employees, and investors

Differences between public relations & marketing

While public relations and marketing have a lot in common — they’re both focused on communication and building relationships — there are important distinctions between the two.

Purpose

Marketing is primarily about generating leads and driving sales by promoting products or services to a target audience. It focuses on creating value for customers in a way that encourages engagement or purchases. Whether a B2B software company produces a white paper on industry trends or a consumer-oriented brand comes up with a highly entertaining or memorable television commercial, the goal is the same: encouraging customers to reach into their wallets.

PR, on the other hand, is more about managing an organization’s reputation and building positive relationships with various stakeholders, including journalists, customers, employees, and investors. Its goal is to maintain goodwill and trust — and ultimately drive better business outcomes because of it.

Approach

Marketing relies on paid campaigns, advertising, and direct sales to deliver messaging and drive engagement. Typically, marketing teams measure success through metrics like sales and conversions.

While marketing focuses on meeting specific customer needs through advertisements and content creation, PR centers on building a brand’s reputation through earned media, storytelling, and relationship-building. PR teams are always thinking about maintaining trust and preserving a favorable long-term image.

Audience

Marketing campaigns are geared toward potential customers, with hopes of driving sales and engagement. PR, on the other hand, appeals to a broader audience — the general public — aiming to build trust and maintain a positive reputation.

Where PR seeks to build and nurture long-term relationships with different groups, marketing is all about targeting the ideal customer with tailored messages and campaigns designed to spark interest and generate measurable results.

If PR can be described as a marathon, marketing is more like a sprint.

Timeline

PR typically focuses on long-term goals, working to build and sustain a positive reputation over time through consistent messaging, relationship-building, and crisis management.

If PR can be described as a marathon, marketing is more like a sprint. Campaigns tend to be more short-term and aim for immediate results — more leads, more sales, or more brand awareness, for example. In many cases, marketing results are time-bound; teams might roll out campaigns around product launches or seasonal sales. Compare that to PR, which is more gradual and shapes a brand’s image over a longer period of time.

Many brands integrate PR and marketing efforts.

Where do public relations & marketing overlap?

Since PR and marketing both help improve a brand’s image and lead to better business outcomes, they often overlap, just in different ways.

One of the main areas of overlap is in communication. Both PR and marketing teams work to deliver a clear, consistent message to the target audience in hopes of positively shaping how the brand is perceived. To do this, both teams create content, producing materials like press releases, blogs, and social media posts to engage and inform their audience.

Additionally, PR and marketing are both tasked with managing the organization’s reputation and creating brand loyalty. While marketing builds brand awareness and drives sales, PR ensures that the brand maintains a positive public image.

Is it common to do PR & marketing at the same time?

Due to these areas of overlap, PR and marketing teams often work together; the functions complement each other. Using both strategies together helps create a cohesive brand message, which ensures consistency across advertising, media coverage, and public interactions.

For this reason, many brands integrate PR and marketing efforts. By doing so, they can increase alignment across teams and get better results from their investments in each function.

Where does thought leadership fit into a public relations strategy?

When most people think of public relations, they think of things like company spokespeople going on TV in response to a crisis or firing out press releases to announce new innovations or executive hires. While both are core PR functions, there’s another key component that can position the brand as an expert in the field: executive thought leadership.

By sharing valuable insights, ideas, and innovative solutions, company thought leaders can build credibility, establish trust, and develop influence within their industry. As executives establish themselves as bona fide thought leaders, PR teams can use their newfound influence to secure speaking opportunities, media interviews, and guest article publications.

Altogether, these elements enhance brand visibility and strengthen the organization’s reputation. It’s a proactive approach that helps brands shape how they’re perceived in hopes of driving business and increasing the chances they’ll be thought of favorably during crisis scenarios.

Ready to develop an effective PR strategy?

Developing an effective PR strategy starts with clearly defining your goals. Maybe you want to improve brand awareness or maybe you want to enhance your reputation.

Once you’ve figured out what you hope to accomplish, you need to craft a compelling message that aligns with your brand’s values and speaks to your target audience’s interests. From there, you need to choose which channels to broadcast your messages on.

A well-oiled PR strategy involves mastering media relations, creating content, reputation management, and a whole lot more. And if you really want to take your strategy to the next level, it also needs to include executive thought leadership.

Looking to incorporate thought leadership into your PR strategy? Learn more about ways to get started.

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