What’s the difference between PR and marketing?
The clue to PR is in the title – public relations is all about relationship management, winning friends and influencing people. PR professionals are engaged to maintain a positive image and build a strong association with your brand. It is a discipline that looks after reputation, with the aim of influencing opinion and long-term behaviour.
Think of it as future-proofing. There are many elements of PR, including organised networking, communicating with the media, and directly addressing your audience via social media. All should be part of a planned, integrated and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its public.
Marketing has much shorter term objectives. It’s primarily interested in seeing a fast return on investment through sales – and ROI is often measured in the number of new customers a campaign attracts. It uses a slightly different tool set, including advertising, events and promotions, to get an instant action from the consumer.
Marketeer’s skills complement those in PR, since a successful marketing campaign leverages the awareness and goodwill, even susceptibility, that a well-thought out PR strategy creates.
LGA offers a range of above and below-the-line promotional services, including:
- PR strategy
- News release and feature writing
- Copywriting
- Media management
- Social media advertising
- Copywriting for external newsletters
- Copy-editing
- Product launches
- Social media campaign building
- Blogging and vlogging
- Broadcast media training
- Commercial photography
- On location and in-studio video production