Fact Factory: Marketing, sales and PR are not the same!

Marketing, Sales and PR. These three are integral to every business. The irony, however, is that most of the businesses think of these three as synonymous terms. This is why the departments are collaborative referred to as Sales and Marketing department.

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I might sound rude here, but this kind of mindset, according to me, is flawed. Marketing, Sales and PR are highly specific fields, with each one having its different identity. Let us first of all talk in pure technical terms. In technical language, these three terms are defined as well -

• Public Relations refer to the maintenance of a favourable public image using professional ways.
• Marketing is the means used by a business takes to promote its services or products.
• Sales, on the other hand, is the collaborative actions taken to sell something.

While PR focuses on building a repute for the business, Marketing revolves more around promoting services and goods that you are selling. And sales is the ultimate process that generates business. The three are interconnected, but completely different from each other.

Now that we have a little background of the story, let us focus on each element one by one.

Public Relations

As it is evident from the definition, PR is more about building a positive rapport about the business. It revolves more about creating your business as a credible source for customers.

Some of the strategies you can related to maintaining a good PR include -

• Creating positive press about your business in the top-tier trade publications.
• Tapping industry influencers like journalists to talk about your business and services on the whole.
• Spreading words about the accolades and recognitions that your business has received.

And more.

But, why PR is important?

The answer to this question can be summed up in one sentence - People buy brands! And if your brand does not have market credibility, don’t expect people to go for buying it. In words of Seth Godin - people don’t buy goods or services. They buy relations and stories. PR is that resource which helps you create stories and strike an emotional connect with your audience.

The importance of PR could be summed up as -

• It raises awareness about your business.
• It builds brand credibility.
• It strengthens your customer relations.
• It gives a boost to your niche-authority.

So, you can see how much you can achieve by starting your PR strategies on the right foot.

Marketing

Now let’s have an in depth look at marketing, and its contribution in running a business successfully. Marketing is focused specifically on branding products and services. Here is a look at some of the tactics used by marketers -

• Running ad-campaigns for products/services
• Creating materials to be used for product launches, and marketing campaigns like print brochures
• Taking care of digital marketing activities like website, social media channels and more. (As a matter of fact, digital marketing in itself is a highly specific part of marketing)

And lot of other stuff.

Why a business needs solid marketing strategy?

There are three main reasons why a business needs to focus on its marketing gimmicks. Have a look -

• Build a platform for customer interaction.
• Analyse your competitors and strategize accordingly.
• Get more leads, which can be further converted into paying customers.
• Stay on top of the market trends.

Sales

Moving on to the last part of our discussion, we are going to talk about sales. Like the names says, sales is all about selling products. Here is a look at some tried and tested strategies which are used by businesses to get more sales -

• Cold calling to leads generated by marketing
• Targeting referral audience
• Door to door selling
• Re-targeting potential clients

These are a few of the basic and most popularly used tactics by sales teams to get more revenue for the business.

Why sales is important?

The answer is crystal clear - sales is that part of the business which finally converts a customer and gets him to pay. So, sales is important to get the cash flowing for the business. I guess this one sentence in itself is sufficient to elaborate on the importance of sales for a business.

The information I’ve shared in this post might look ordinary and basic to many. But, trust me when I say that almost all the business owners are still not pretty sure about these basics. They mix PR, Marketing and Sales as the same term. And this is a major reason why their businesses are stuck in a rut.

If you are also doing the same mistake, then it is time to delve deeper into PR, Marketing and Sales. And learn about how you can make the most of each of these aspects of business handling.

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Vartika Kashyap is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016. She currently runs the marketing team at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.

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