Public relations and marketing are two important activities for many businesses, but they are often confused. They are in fact very different, but they can be used together to great effect, especially when it comes to increasing brand recognition where there is often a lot of crossover. Here’s a guide to the differences between them, as well as how you can use them together in your own business.
How Public Relations and Marketing Differ
First of all, it is important to know the difference between marketing and PR. Marketing consists of activities including advertising, creating content, social media adverts, sending emails and more. Marketing focuses on communicating value for your products and services. It is essentially you talking about yourself and your business.
Public relations, on the other hand, relies on third parties to build awareness and credibility. Rather than you telling your prospects about your business, you use the media and bloggers instead to create a positive image of your brand.
How to Combine the Two for Better Brand Recognition
There is a lot of crossover of PR and marketing when it comes to brand recognition. Here are a few ways that you can combine both PR and marketing that you can start to take advantage of.
Social Media
Social media can be used as a form of online PR. While social media marketing can involve advertising on various social platforms and sending out information about your company, the very nature of social media means that people will also be commenting on your products and services in a way that you do not control. This can obviously be positive or negative, whereas your social marketing will focus on only saying positive things about your brand.
Social media marketing and PR can work hand-in-hand on social media to great effect. On your social channels, you will want to ensure you have a cohesive strategy that involves both your marketing and PR departments.
SEO
SEO is often seen as a marketing activity, but there is actually a lot of crossover. When people type in your product or service into a search engine, what do they see? If they see a positive story in a major newspaper, this is likely to positively influence their impression of your business. SEO PR can often involve optimising third-party sites that feature positive news about your brand, so there is a lot of marketing and PR crossover.
This is more important than ever because these days people start to research earlier. They go online and look for information before you ever hear from them. You want them to find valuable content and information, and this can come in the form of your own content as well as third-party content that builds trust.
Event Sponsorship
A good way to combine PR and marketing is to sponsor a local event, such as a charity event. You will be paying to market your business at the event or perhaps just to have a presence at it, and you could even strengthen you presence by providing giveaways.
Depending on the event, you could give a chocolate gift box away, perhaps as a prize. You may get picked up in the local press – having your brand associated with a good cause can be great PR and can boost your brand image.
Boost Your Brand Recognition
These are just some of the ways that you can give your brand recognition a real boost through combining PR and marketing. Have a think about which of these you could use for your business, and make use of both marketing and PR in combination.
Philip Ahn is a Chocolatier based in Nottingham UK. He Specialises in manufacturing chocolate bars such as pralines, truffles and marzipan for companies under ‘private label, own brand’. Martin is privileged to be working with some of the biggest and smallest names in the industry. He enjoys sharing his ideas and insights online.
