I've recently spent time consulting small business owners and have been reminded that tremendous confusion exists regarding the roles and relationships between marketing, advertising, and public relations. In this blog I will clarify the relationship between the three.
Marketing, advertising, and public relations all are strategic efforts in business. Practitioners in these professionals use many of the same skills such as strategy, planning, writing, and production, so the professions are sometimes considered to be sister professions. But their purposes and roles are very different.
The purpose of marketing is to increase revenue and sales. My definition of marketing is "the management functions related to delivering the right quantity of the right products/services to the right customers at the right place and time using the proper methods of promotion." I prefer that definition because it focuses on the concept of the marketing mix defined by Neil Borden. According to Borden, the marketing mix is the blend of the four P's of marketing: product (including service), price, place (distribution), and promotion. Some have added additional P's to the blend including people, processes, and physical tangibles.
The P that is promotion is the umbrella term for all of the communications that surround the product or service. It includes packaging because that contains communications about the product or service. But promotion is best known for many of its tools including advertising, public relations publicity and special events, direct mail, trade shows, interactive media, advertising specialities, etc.
Advertising is the best known tool of promotion. I define it as the paid placement of a message. Advertising includes mass communications efforts such as television and radio commercials, newspaper ads, and billboards. A major advantage of advertising is that the marketer has complete control over how the ad or commercial will look, when it will appear, and for how long.
Perhaps the most underutilized promotional tool is publicity. Publicity and special events are two forms of promotion that fall under the auspices of public relations, a sister profession of marketing. Public relations focuses on strategic relationships. My definition of public relations is the management function that builds mutually beneficial relationships with target publics (or audiences). Examples of typical target publics include employees, investors, the community, the news media, governmental agencies, and others.
Public relations is perhaps the most underutilized promotional tool available to marketers because public relations can deliver publicity for marketers. I define publicity as earned media coverage. It can be much more effective than advertising because it, by definition, brings third party credibility (meaning that reporters and editors have signed off on the information as being newsworthy). A marketer can't buy an ad on the front page of the local newspaper or at the top of the local news television show. The downside is that a public relations practitioner must truly understand how to work effectively with the news media in order to get the type of publicity desired. Unlike advertising, publicity doesn't use a contract and there are no guarantees of news coverage. Special events oftentimes earn publicity when they are newsworthy and pertain to people. News is about people. In another post I will discuss strategies of publicity and newsworthiness.
In summary, marketing, advertising, and public relations are sister professions that can use similar skills of strategy and creativity. But they have very functions. Promotion is the umbrella term for marketing communications tools including advertising, publicity, and more.
