For those who are not experts in the advertising, marketing, PR, and branding worlds (which is almost everyone), these categories can easily mix together, making it difficult to understand what the difference truly is. But have no fear, we’re here to clear up the confusion. In this blog, we’ll help you better understand the purpose of each and how they can potentially help your company. Since Transformation Marketing is, well, a marketing company, that’s where we’ll begin.
Marketing: the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.
Marketing is a process that refers to the careful business activities a company implements in order to bring together buyers and sellers for the exchange of products and services. These tactics can include formulating marketing strategies to use in conjunction with other tools such as social media, television, packaging and print media.
Advertising: the activity or profession of producing advertisements for commercial products or services.
Advertising is when an individual or an organization pays to have announcements sent to the public to try and convince potential or existing consumers to buy a product or service. An advertisement aggressively or indirectly includes putting the word out about a product through media such as newspapers, posters, television, radio or the Internet. Advertising is often referred to as “paid media” because organizations are paying to have their message shown to consumers.
Branding: the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design.
A brand is anything that helps get potential or existing customers to remain loyal to your product or company. Aspects of someone or something’s brand can include the logo, symbol, name or design. Branding involves the assortment of things an audience expects and experiences, combined with the aspects of all the brand elements. This creates an association between the consumer’s ideals and the product, service, or company in general.
Public Relations: the professional maintenance of a favorable public image by a company or other organization or a famous person.
The main purpose of public relations (PR) is to help organizations maintain a positive image in the eye of the public. Those involved in public relations include company stakeholders, customers, clients, employees, local communities, and several other audience members. PR is essentially used to build and maintain a company’s reputation. Think of public relations in terms of a celebrity. If they are involved in any sort of scandal, they have a PR team who is in charge of making sure the celebrity’s reputation is not tarnished. Public relations is often considered “earned media.”
While these four categories share similarities, they hold many distinct and important differences as well. At Transformation, we believe each is a key component in sales, customer relationships, and company success overall. Yes, we’re technically a marketing company, but our team will address and enhance everything marketing, advertising, branding, and PR for your business!
*Definitions from www.oxforddictionaries.com