Although marketing and public relations overlap and complement each other in some ways, they aren’t interchangeable. Simply having a marketing department with no public relations is bad news for any business. Still, many companies need to be persuaded of the benefits of having both.
Here are four reasons why companies with marketing departments still need public relations:
1. PR practitioners make marketing more successful.
Good public relations helps make a marketer’s job much easier than if a company has no or poor public relations. Because public relations reinforces positive public opinion about a brand, consumers are more receptive to marketing tactics. In other words, if the public likes you, they’re more likely to listen to your marketing campaigns and support you. Although some public relations strategies don’t directly bring in profit, they do pave the way for marketers to execute successful campaigns.
2. PR practitioners keep a company’s image positive.
Marketing doesn’t help a company manage its reputation. Public relations, on the other hand, has the best interest of both the company and its publics in mind. This makes public relations very valuable when it comes to ethical and legal situations, in addition to employee, consumer and media relations. Marketing departments are less concerned with image than making a profit, but a bad public image can result in severe negative consequences. Public relations helps prevent such consequences.
3. PR practitioners are experienced in writing for the media.
Public relations practitioners have extensive backgrounds in writing for all types of media. They are taught to write in specific styles that get stories picked up by social media, newspapers, magazines, broadcast channels, etc. More media coverage results in more awareness of the company. Marketers, although experienced writers in some areas, are generally not nearly as skilled in writing for the media.
4. PR practitioners are trained to handle crisis communication and damage control.
It’s not the job of marketers to deal with crisis communication and damage control. It’s the job of public relations practitioners, who are specifically trained not only to come up with crisis communication plans, but also to implement them. And in this age of transparency, crisis communication is more necessary than ever. People want to know what’s going on and what the company is doing to fix an issue, and they want to know immediately.
Because of these reasons, and many more, underestimating the value of public relations is a huge mistake for any company. Only having a marketing department or using the marketing department to do the company’s public relations can result in poor crisis communication, inadequate press coverage and an unstable reputation. A company is at its best when it utilizes both marketing and public relations practitioners.
–Sarah Helfgott, Account Supervisor
