The difference between Marketing, PR and Advertising

Marketing, PR and advertising all go hand-in-hand, but many people aren't sure of what the difference is between the 3. We often see advertising all over, on billboards, on television, and on the internet. Quite often you hear about the 4 "P's" of marketing; price, promotion, place, and products. Marketing does entail the 4 "P's", but its main focus is on finding customers. Public Relations (PR) can be applied to every aspect of marketing. PR creates the knowledge and understanding of the product or service that is being promoted. To gain a better understanding, we will look at the differences between marketing, PR and advertising in more detail.

Beginning with marketing; typically marketing is considered a process that involves different aspects of advertising, sales and distribution. Marketing is concerned with their customers and the needs of their customers. Millions of dollars are spent in marketing focus groups trying to decide how to fix existing products and services. A good marketing strategy will understand the needs of the customer and find the best way to send information to the customer. Planting a seed of desire in a consumer is one of the best tools marketing has. If a consumer relates products with your overall company image, then you have a successful marketing strategy. The main thing to remember about marketing is that it is your job to generate the leads for the sales team.

Moving onto advertising, advertising is an aspect of marketing. The goal of advertising is to create awareness of existing products or services. Advertising explains why customers need that particular product, how it will benefit their lives and how to get it. Advertising is often looked at as the most important part of marketing. It definitely has the largest budget out of all the marketing procedures. However without a good marketing strategy, advertising will not go far.

PR is called the "jack of all trades" in a company. Your PR department often takes on numerous responsibilities like press releases, news conferences, company newsletters, public speaking, television and radio interviews, trade shows, event management, corporate identity and many other things. It is important to have a PR department that can be considered the "face of the company". The PR department are the people that your customers will see and relate to.

Marketing, advertising and PR all relate together to form a unique organization. In order to become successful you need to plan out a good marketing strategy and figure out the best way to advertise and promote them. Advertising comes after a good marketing foundation has been put in place. In order to build this base, you need to get a good group of PR people together and start from the bottom up. Here are a few tips to start up your marketing, PR and advertising strategy:

• Know your customers and their needs.
• Discuss how you can market to your existing customers.
• What works for advertising? What have your customers responded to?
• How are you going to reach your potential customers?
• What is your advertising budget?
• How much time can your PR department spend creating awareness of your product?

Having the answers to these questions will help you lay out a good roadmap for the beginning of a great marketing strategy. Neither advertising, PR nor marketing could succeed without the other. They all go hand in hand to build a successful company. Knowing how they are different and alike are beneficial to your company's success. When your marketing team comes together to create the marketing strategy, they too may be confused by the differences of marketing versus PR versus advertising.