MKTG 332

Difference between PR and Marketing

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I have been working at a local office of a multinational organization. It has a public relations department which works alongside the marketing department. There are some differences between public relations and marketing. Marketing is focused on generating sales directly from the customers. In my company, the marketing department uses tools like discounts and promotions to increase sales. Public relations department focuses on building the reputation of a company by managing communication channels with various stakeholders. These channels include specialized magazine articles to reach stakeholders.

This also means that the media used by the marketing department is properly defined, whereas, there are many media at the disposal of public relations department. Working as an employee in the marketing department, I observed that the company uses a single medium to reach a maximum number of customers. An electronic advertisement includes people from different age groups using the company’s products. The public relations activities were focussed on a single group of stakeholders. A press release containing company stance on equality was aimed at all races.

The messages delivered by public relations department are more powerful than those of the marketing department. The customers are used to looking at various advertisements from the company which communicate marketing content, whereas, public relations content is focused and limited. My organization used the corporate social responsibility aspect to communicate public relations messages CITATION Sus181 \l 1033 (Sefcik, 2018). This phenomenon is helpful in building a positive reputation for the company. It is easier to measure return of marketing expenditures as compared to that of public relations.

Marketing actions have direct results in the form of increased sales and market share, whereas, there are no clear measures to reflect effectiveness of public relation activities. My company releases the social responsibility report along with the annual report. This gives a comprehensive view of all activities undertaken by the company in terms of public relations. The company has to bring certain changes in marketing content as changes take place in the external environment. In case of the company under consideration, technology played an important part in bringing changes to marketing content and communication. The major purpose of both activities is to communicate but to different stakeholders CITATION Jam98 \l 1033 (Grunig & Grunig, 1998).

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Grunig, J. E., & Grunig, L. A. (1998). The relationship between public relations and marketing in excellent organizations: evidence from the IABC study. Journal of Marketing Communication, 141-162.

Sefcik, S. (2018, March 18). https://www.directdevelopmentpr.com/understanding-difference-pr-marketing/. Retrieved from https://www.directdevelopmentpr.com: https://www.directdevelopmentpr.com/understanding-difference-pr-marketing/