Before today’s modern technology, advertisers used completely different metrics to analyze their marketing efforts and seldom did businesses combine marketing and public relations (PR). Maybe they could have done better by doing so, but that’s the past and this is the present. Now you know better and can use PR as part of your marketing to improve and prove ROI (return on investment).

Modern techniques and metrics for measuring business success involves things like evaluating content on blogs and social media. This has created the need for marketing professionals to work with PR firms and vice versa. Nowadays, you need to combine the two for optimal brand awareness and improvement of sales.

What can PR learn from marketing?

The days of reading the morning newspaper on the train or bus commute are almost gone. While a few people still use these mediums, smart phones, digital television, and social media have created a fractured audience. People now get their news in real-time through various sources online. It’s instantaneous and readily available so no one waits for the 10 O’clock news anymore. You can even customize what news you want to get across connected devices.

As far as a client is concerned, PR seems to be less cost-effective as opposed to a functional tactic to promote and achieve optimal results. That’s why you often see public relations get cut from a marketing plan. Sometimes, they even cut their marketing budget, which not good.

Every public relations company needs to consider how their actions affect clients and audiences as opposed to how many “likes” or visits they get. Marketers are quite good at this part of their strategy. They evaluate and analyze how leads are nurtured, how certain campaigns affect SEO, and analyze the impact of each.

What Can Marketing Learn from PR?

Today’s content is vastly different than what they are used to. Content marketing is seldom self-promotional in totality. Instead, it’s about telling your story. That is exactly the purpose of PR. Public relations professionals are experts at managing and telling your brand’s story. It helps to make your brand more credible and boosts its visibility.

Public relations professionals avoid the salesly terms “Buy Now!” and “Click Here!” that work on the mental approach for sales. PR pros are specialists that create top-of-the-funnel content messages designed to build brand awareness, relationships, trust, and reputation. They are also consistent with focusing messages and how to share it across social networks, making use of top influencers or through traditional sources like bloggers and pitching reporters.

Marketers would do well to adopt and embrace the ideals of PR content and message creation and distribution tactics. It would breathe new life into their lead nurturing and expand their reach.

Working Together is a Win-Win

Marketing and PR bring something important to the brand awareness and promotional table. Marketers are lead generation gurus and PR professionals are lead nurturing gurus. Bring the two together to work in conjunction with one another and you will boost your business’ brand awareness and garner more loyal customers.