Once upon a time, there were PR professionals, and there were marketing professionals. PR pros focused on writing press releases and getting media mentions. Marketing experts handled the content and marketing campaigns. Never did the twain meet.
These days, it’s another story. There’s plenty of overlap among PR, marketing, social media, blogging, content marketing and advertising, and having cross-function skills will only serve to make you smarter, whether you’re a business owner, marketer or PR pro.
The anatomy of a marketing and PR campaign
Let’s look at an example of how marketing and PR work together. Let’s say you’re the Marketing Manager for a company that makes software for engineers.
- You publish a white paper targeting engineers
- You share it on social media
- You write a press release about the white paper
- You share the press release on social media
- You blog about the white paper
- You post the press release to your Newsroom on your website
- You pitch bloggers and journalists to share the white paper with their audience
As you can see, it’s not so cut and dry as being all marketing or all PR tasks.
My Challenge to You: If you’ve put all your focus into either PR or marketing, teach yourself one new skill a month in the other area. Learn how to use a social media platform to amplify your press releases. Build relationships with the media that will come to fruition down the road. Get out of your comfort zone.
Social media: The tie that binds
In my mind, social media has been the main driver of melding these two disciplines into one. Sharing content or promotions, as well as news and announcements, is what attracts people to your company. Without it, you’d have fewer visitors on your website, and fewer customers overall.
My Challenge to You: Start incorporating social into more of your PR activities. Click those social share buttons on your press release. Connect with journalists and bloggers through Twitter and LinkedIn.
Customers want it all in one place
Gone (mostly) are the days of a company hiring an ad agency, a PR firm and a marketing consultant. Who wants to deal with all those invoices? Now, customers want all their marketing and PR services from one full-service firm. And so those of us who offer those services are either a) scrambling to learn additional skills to meet client demand, or b) floundering and dying off.
My Challenge to You: Don’t stay stuck in the mud. If you’re at an agency, pay attention to what your customers are asking for, or what they’re paying someone else to do, then learn how to do it better so they’ll move all their business over to you.
We don’t even recognize PR anymore
Those of us who have been in PR long enough to remember typing press releases on a typewriter (what’s that?) and physically mailing them to prospective publications might scoff at our instant-pudding press release distribution and insist that it’s no longer “real PR.”
But I push back and say that, like everything, PR has evolved. It’s no longer just press releases and articles in the Wall Street Journal. It’s videos. Blogs. Social. Online publications. And it’s way better than it’s ever been.
My Challenge to You: Change your perspective of what PR looks like. If the objective of public relations is to build relationships between your company and the public, find other ways to get there. Start guest blogging to amplify your voice in your industry. Make contacts at conferences that can help you reach a wider audience. Open up beyond the traditional press release.
Susan Payton is the President of Egg Marketing & Communications, where she helps her clients realize the benefits of social media, content marketing and blogging.
Image: Shaylor, Riccardo Cuppini
