Public Relations and Marketing: What’s the Difference?

Public Relations (PR) is the management of one’s relationship with various public entities. A public entity could include the media, also known as the Fourth Estate, customers, governmental agencies, employees, clients and others. So, PR is about managing how these various entities perceive and esteem a leader or company.

Think of Public Relations as a broad umbrella. It includes strategic communications, crisis communications, media relations, earned media, paid media, publicity, marketing, social media, event planning, printing and production, and more. A PR budget would include line items for each of these areas.

Another way to explain is that Public Relations includes a host of tools that help a leader or organization manage its relationships with various public entities.

What is Marketing?

Marketing is a component of public relations. It is the packaging and selling of a company’s products or services. It includes product placement, advertising and market research. Marketing is in service of selling the company’s or leader’s products or services. The purpose is to garner resources and position the company favorably.  

Don’t Flatten Public Relations

Often, when people talk about public relations, they reduce it to garnering favorable media coverage. That’s one piece of public relations, but public relations is much broader. Maintaining a leader or brand’s favorable public image also includes marketing, public events, strategic communications and more.

Others talk about PR in narrow terms, or flatten it to one its parts. For example, when a celebrity is caught in a scandal, a fan or observer may say, “they need better PR.” What they’re really saying is the celebrity needs to better manage their relationship with the public.

A PR Team is Includes More Than a Publicist

In other cases, I’ve heard people respond to a public official’s crisis and lament, “I know this person’s publicist is working overtime.” It’s important to note that a publicist is one facet of public relations. A public official or brand’s public relations team has multiple people who are responsible for thinking about how to navigate their relationships with public entities.

For instance, a manager, multiple publicists and strategists may comprise a celebrity’s public relations team. An elected official’s public relations team may include his or her campaign manager, strategists, press secretary, spouse and more.

The main point is that public relations is the overarching operation that allows a leader or company to sustain a favorable standing with the public. Marketing is a piece of public relations just like media outreach is a piece of public relations.

Jennifer R. Farmer is the principal of Spotlight PR LLC. Check out her other writings on our blog, The Pitch.