Are Public Relations and Marketing the Same Thing? Here Is How They Differ and How They Work Together
Public relations (PR) and marketing are often confused. They both involve communication, aim to influence people and use media to get messages out. They have different goals, methods and audiences, and they work best when they are planned together.
What Is Public Relations?
The Canadian Public Relations Society defines public relations as "the strategic management of relationships between an organization and its diverse publics." PR shapes how people think about an organization, a person or an issue. Its work includes building trust, sharing important information, working with the media, managing crises and maintaining long-term relationships with the community.
Example: When a company opens a new building, the PR team might write a news release, arrange interviews and host a ribbon-cutting to build goodwill and show community involvement.
What Is Marketing?
Marketing promotes products or services to customers. It uses research, pricing, advertising and promotions to attract customers, create demand and increase sales.
Example: When a company launches a new drink, the marketing team might run social media ads, offer a discount or hold a contest to drive purchases.
| Public Relations | Marketing | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Build reputation and relationships | Increase sales |
| Audience | The public, media and stakeholders | Customers and buyers |
| Time frame | Long-term reputation | Campaigns and short-term sales |
| Media | Earned and owned | Paid, such as ads and promotions |
| Example tool | News release | Coupon or discount |
| Example channel | News coverage | Social media ad |
| Main trade-off | Less control over how the story is told | Costs money to run |
Definition: Canadian Public Relations Society
Where They Overlap
Both disciplines communicate with the public, aim to influence opinions or actions and rely on writing, visuals and creative content. They often share tools: social media, websites, email newsletters, interviews, events and influencer outreach. In many organizations the two teams work side by side.
Where They Differ
Purpose. Marketing aims to create demand and bring in revenue. PR aims to build trust and protect reputation.
Timing. Marketing campaigns usually run for weeks or months around a launch or promotion. PR work continues in the background over years.
Type of media. Marketing mostly uses paid media such as ads and sponsored posts. PR focuses on earned media, such as news coverage and interviews, along with owned channels like a company blog.
Control. In marketing, the organization writes the ad and controls the message. In PR, once a story reaches reporters and the public, others shape how it is told.
Audience. Marketing focuses on customers. PR considers everyone with a stake in the organization, including employees, investors, media, governments, neighbours and advocacy groups.
We help organizations plan public relations, media relations and stakeholder communication that supports their wider goals.
Explore Strategic CommunicationsHow They Work Together
A product launch. Marketing runs ads and promotions. PR pitches a story to local news about how the product was developed and organizes a launch event with media coverage.
A crisis. If a product has a problem, PR leads the public response and media relations while marketing pauses or adjusts campaigns so ads do not run against the news. Our post on the 2022 Rogers outage looks at public communication during a major service failure.
For public projects such as roads, transit or utilities, the balance shifts further toward PR. There is often nothing to sell, and the work centres on public understanding and trust.
- Is our goal to sell something, or to build understanding and trust?
- Who are we trying to reach beyond customers?
- Are we relying only on paid channels?
- Who speaks for us if a story turns negative?
- Do our marketing and PR messages line up?
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