Advertising vs Public Relations

Media Relations, Healthcare Public Relations, Entertainment PR firms, Healthcare Public Relations, Communication Agency are all necessary for the survival of a business.

Many businesses believe that advertising and public relations play the same role for their business and if they do advertising they don’t need PR, and vice versa. However, PR and advertising have completely different roles for your business, which are important to understand to help you reach your target market and achieve your business objectives. Advertising is creating paid announcements to be promoted through different types of media including online, print, TV, out-of-home and radio. PR, on the other hand, is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organisations and the public.

Paid v/s Free

• Advertising: you pay for an advertisement to be placed in the media.

• PR: your PR agency develops strategies for you to gain publicity in the media. PR professionals develop a range of tactics to gain positive media attention for your brand, which is very effective at increasing your target audience’s brand awareness.

Message Control 

• Advertising: you have control over the content of your advertisement including where and when it will be seen in the media.
• PR: When you pitch a story to a reporter and he/she decides to pursue it, you don’t have as much control over what gets into the paper. But a good PR person knows how to increase a company’s chances of positive publicity.

Duration of Coverage

• Advertising: You can pay for an advertisement to be shown in the media as many times as your budget allows. 
• PR: An advantage of PR is that you can send a story idea to a number of journalists who will then publish the story in different ways. This allows your target audience to see the information differently in many mediums, which may be more effective at reinforcing the message.