You’ve probably heard me stressing the importance of PR at times like this, yet you may not fully understand what PR is, or believe PR is just another word for marketing?

I hope in this article to shed some light on the enigma that is PR.

Marketing and PR are in fact very different disciplines, yes they interact and to a certain degree overlap, but they have different purposes, and once you fully understand the purpose of PR, you will be better equipped to put PR into play in your business, and once you do, trust me you won’t look back.

In the simplest of terms; Marketing is about promotion and selling a particular product or service, you may hand out flyers, you may invest in Google advertising, or attend events… we’ve all done it. Marketing is primarily responsible for attracting new customers.

Public Relations ‘PR’ on the other hand is concerned with your reputation, and maintaining engagement and interest in your brand, and this is achieved through positively managing your communication channels. This is where copy really is king.

Hopefully you can see now why at times like this, maintaining engagement, and thereby PR is so important.

PR and Marketing are very separate entities, yet they are most effective when they work together, which is why you get PR agencies who also undertake marketing, like myself.

To understand how they work together consider this… would you put an advert out to the public, and expect people to just click buy-now, with no understanding of who you are and what you do?

Probably not… and this is where PR comes into its own, by providing explanation, and building trust, laying the foundations if you like for the advertisement to work its magic.

A PR specialist will own an organisations communications plan, not the marketeer and certainly not the sales team, apologies to my previous colleagues in sales here 😉

However; for PR to be effective it must be a strategic release of information across a multitude of channels. It’s not simply a case of broadcasting sales message after sales message, and bombarding one channel, but rather it’s about facilitating two way communications, and engaging meaningfully with your audience.

Only then have your truly engaged with your customers and embraced PR.

Take a look at Social media, and like me you will see a steady stream of advertisements. However look closer and you will see examples of companies trying to engage with their audiences, whether this is via a poll to find out what they think, sharing community engagement initiatives, responding to reviews or simply providing insight into their operations via interviews or a well-written blog. This is all PR, and these companies have got it sussed.

But what else can PR do for your business?

PR can support your business to thrive and grow by taking responsibility for media relations, writing and delivering statements and preparing and executing media events. PR also manages community engagement initiatives, as well as producing editorial content, and can even write that all important speech, hopefully alleviating some of those pesky sweaty palm moments…we’ve all had them.

I hope you will see, PR has many strings to its bow, at the heart however is a desire to engage with customers, to understand what motivates them, and to ensure that they have the best possible experience with your company. All being well they will then share that positive experience with others via reviews and customer feedback. A great PR result!

I will leave you with a final thought, Einstein once said:

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

So if you’re publishing advert after advert and not seeing any results, perhaps you’re struggling to connect with a particular segment of your audience, don’t define insanity, embrace PR.