Posted on: January 11, 2016

Both advertising and PR assist build brands and communicate with target audiences. The most basic divergence between them is that advertising space is paid while public relations results are earned through providing the media with information in the grade of printing releases and pitches. For instance, you lot have to buy online banner ad space, but you can pitch a story to a news outlet. In that location is also something chosen 'owned' media which is the content you create for your website, or photos and videos you produce for social media.

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Now let's become down to the nitty gritty, and explore some of the other factors that make these two marketing avenues very unlike:

  1. The difference between PR and advertising infographic Target: While companies and organizations are creating advertisements that primarily target potential customers, PR professionals are hoping to cast a wider net. Publics targeted through PR tin can be internal or external. They can include employees, investors, customers, the media, legislators, and many more than. In that location is likewise a new category chosen influencers, which refers to people who have a lot of connections personally, like celebrities or politicians, or who have a large following on social media.
  2. Goals & Objectives: Public relations helps build make sensation and reputation. The goals and objectives behind a successful PR campaign circumduct around the fact that consumers place more trust in and are more than probable to do business with a company they know and admire. Advertisements are generated for a specific target market in guild to generate sales. They usually focus more on promoting a production or service than on building a reputation.
  3. Control: When you buy an advertisement, you determine how the advertisement volition expect, what it will say, where it volition exist placed, and when information technology will run. How much exposure your advertizement receives is largely dependent on how much coin you lot accept to spend. When it comes to PR, and specifically working with the media, you lot have less control. The media decides how your data is presented in the news and if information technology volition even be covered.
  4. Strategy: With advertising, there is a shorter term goal in mind. Advertizement copy is geared toward specific ownership seasons (think vacation shopping), pushing a new product, or promoting special deals to boost sales. PR professionals are always looking at the big picture, delivering meaningful information about their brand to build a sustainable and dedicated base of "make fans" that includes consumers and other stakeholders.
  5. Brownie: Consumers do non believe everything an advert tells them. Why? Because whoever is paying for that ad is dictating exactly what the advertizement says. They're not going to say "our product is likely to break within a year," fifty-fifty though that may exist the instance. Through PR, messages are communicated past a trusted third political party, the media, and are far more credible.

So far, the differences are pretty unproblematic and piece of cake to understand, just the ever-growing popularity of social media has started to mistiness the lines between advertising and public relations. Why? Considering social media can be used in numerous ways.

Let's focus on Facebook. Your Facebook account is something your business created and controls. Unless you hire someone to manage your page, it is essentially cost free. You lot tin can, however, apply Facebook for both PR and paid advertising efforts. If you pay to "boost" your mail, that is considered advertising. Additional posts announced higher in the news feed, then there'southward a improve chance your audience will run across them. Yous can also betrayal audiences beyond merely your fans to the content. On the other hand, y'all may post a great photo of your new company mascot, a cute puppy, and generate tons of likes, comments and shares at no cost to yous.

The best way to promote a business is to contain both public relations and advertizement into your marketing strategy in an integrated and coordinated way. Leveraging both mediums enables you to heave the frequency with which target audiences hear your key brand messages and the means in which they are heard. People must be exposed to a marketing message multiple times earlier they volition remember it.

Interested in learning more?

At Marshall Communications, we create integrated customized marketing communications strategies for our clients, which we phone call Marshall Plans®. Nosotros would love to have an opportunity to talk to y'all about coordinating your advertising, public relations and internet marketing under one coordinated brand umbrella.

Send us an email at services@marshallpr.com or give us a call at (207) 623-4177. Yous can also sign up for our monthly e-newsletter, The Marshall Report!