Why PR pros need to encourage close relationships with marketers

It’s about time that public relations and marketing professionals join forces and work closely with one another to benefit their clients. Here, media update’s Talisa Jansen van Rensburg reveals why this is vital for all PR pros.

The lines between PR and marketing have been blurred, leaving countless people to believe that PR pros and marketers do the same job, when in fact, they do completely different work. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t build on top of one another to reach their common goal: satisfying the customer.

So, what is the difference between PR pros and marketers?

According to Alex Honeysett, a brand and marketing strategist, “Marketing is focused on promoting and selling a specific product, whereas PR is focused on maintaining a positive reputation for a company as a whole.”

Now, let’s take a look at three reasons why PR pros and marketers should team-up:

1. PR pros and marketers have the same goals

Regardless of what exactly their job description says, marketers and PR pros share common goals.

For example, both professionals:

• Make money for the company
• Ensure that the brand looks good
• Play their part in ensuring press releases and marketing campaigns are of an excellent standard
• Create messages that resonate with brands’ audiences

As the PR pro, you will need to show the public just how amazing your client or their brand is, and a marketer can assist with that.

Since marketers also want to ensure the company looks good, it shows that both parties are interested in making sure that the brand’s reputation is well maintained. Therefore, by working together, they can better help one another to ensure this goal is reached. This is done by providing advice to one another and looking at issues as a team.

2. PR pros and marketers complement each other

If there’s something that everyone can agree on, it’s that these professionals are best at complementing one another: Marketers need PR pros to make the brand they are marketing look good, and PR professionals need marketers to gain insight and inspiration for their brand campaigns.

For example, the PR team for Nando’s does a great job at making the public absolutely love the brand. The marketing team does their part by getting creative with their campaigns allowing PR pros to continue getting public ‘approval’.

This just proves how well PR pros and marketers strengthen one another. Once teamed up, they’re able to have insightful brainstorming sessions together. In these sessions, they come up with ideas on how to better complement one another, and work side by side to make innovative ideas a reality for their brands.

3. PR pros and marketers understand one another

Not everyone in a company works directly with clients or the public, which means that PR professionals and marketers have a better understanding of the difficulties that come with working directly with people.

Both PR pros and marketers focus on making sure that their clients remain happy. Ergo, if they are to work together, they can help each other better understand the needs of the clients and encourage each other to keep on pushing until they get the results that they are looking for.

PR professionals work with clients on a daily basis; they need to provide feedback on the success of press releases and how the brand’s reputation is being portrayed in the media. This means that they constantly need to ensure that they keep their clients happy.

Marketers need to communicate their marketing efforts and campaign ideas with their teams and managers, and they need to reach out to the relevant people within the industry to help them bring their ideas to life.

Seeing that both PR pros and marketers work with people on a daily basis, it would make sense for them to work together because, as a team, they are much stronger. For example, if someone on the marketing team found out that people don’t like a specific type of campaign, they could communicate that with the PR team and ensure that they steer clear from it in their press content and communications efforts.

The same goes for PR pros, who have the ability to pick up on which topics are trending and performing best; they can then communicate these insights with the marketing team, who can then shift the focus of their campaign ideas if necessary.

Instead of working apart, they can help each other find the best solutions for similar problems that both parties might experience when working closely with clients.

Find original article on Media update