Why the difference matters
A firm hires a publicist and is disappointed that the phone did not ring. Another pays for social media management and wonders why no journalist has called. A third spends on advertising and finds that prospects still do not understand what the firm does.
In each case the work may have been done well. The firm bought one job and expected the result of another.
The three overlap, and one person can do all of them for a small firm. They are still separate jobs. The simplest way to tell them apart is to ask who controls the message and who receives it.
Marketing: what you say in places you control
Marketing is everything the firm says about itself in its own space. The website. The one-page summary. The proposal. The email to clients. The sign on the door. The way the phone is answered.
You control every word. That is its strength. The message can be exact, complete and consistent.
It is also its weakness. Everyone knows you wrote it. A reader gives your own description of yourself a certain discount, the same way you would.
The job of marketing is to be clear. A stranger should be able to land on your website and understand within a minute who you are, what you are about and why they should hire you. Most small firm websites do not pass that test. They list services. They do not say who the services are for or what makes this firm different from the next one.
Marketing goes wrong when it tries to impress and forgets to explain. Long words, stock photographs and claims of excellence all read the same from firm to firm. Plain facts do not. The year you started, the kind of client you serve, how you work and what happens after someone calls will set you apart faster than any adjective.
Who does it: whoever knows the firm best and can write plainly, with the owner’s approval.
PR: what other people say about you
Public relations is the work of earning attention you do not control. A reporter writes about your project. An editor publishes your room. A trade newsletter mentions your opening. A podcast host invites you on. A community group thanks you by name.
Someone else decides whether to run it and how to tell it. That is why it carries weight. A reader trusts an editor’s choice more than your advertisement.
It also means PR is uncertain. You can do everything right and get nothing, because a bigger story broke that morning. Anyone who guarantees coverage is either paying for it, which is advertising, or guessing.
The job of PR is to make it easy for someone to tell your story accurately. That takes four things.
- Something that is news to somebody. A new location, a finished project, an appointment, a milestone, a useful point of view on something in the news.
- A short list of the right people. Twenty writers who cover your field and your area are worth more than two thousand addresses.
- Materials that are ready. A plain announcement, the facts, good photographs with credits and a person to call.
- Follow-up. One polite note. Then a reply the same hour if they come back to you.
PR goes wrong when a firm announces things that are not news, sends them to everyone, and then is too busy to return the one call that comes.
It is worth saying that PR is wider than press. How you reply to a complaint is public relations. So is the way a neighbor learns about your building project, and what a referral partner says about you when you are not in the room.
Who does it: someone patient, accurate and organized, with the owner available for the interview.
Social media: where the two meet
Social media is odd because it is both. You control what you post, like marketing. Other people decide whether to share it, comment on it or ignore it, like PR. And it is public, so a reply to one person is read by many.
For most small firms, social media has one main job and it is not the one people expect. It is rarely where new clients first find you. It is where they check on you. Someone hears your name, looks you up and glances at your profile to see whether the firm is alive, what it cares about and how it treats people.
So the job of social media is to show a firm that is present and consistent. That is a modest goal, and it is achievable.
- Post on a schedule you can keep all year. Twice a week for fifty weeks beats daily for a month.
- Show real things: the work, the people, the place.
- Answer questions your clients ask you in person.
- Reply to comments and messages within a day.
- Keep the name, description and contact details identical to your website.
Social media goes wrong in two ways. The first is the burst and the silence: a busy fortnight of posts, then nothing for months. A dormant account looks worse than none. The second is chasing whatever is popular this week, which costs time and makes a serious firm look unsure of itself.
Who does it: someone close enough to the daily work to have material, working to a calendar the owner approves once a month.
Marketing is what you say. PR is what others say. Social media is where people come to check.
The fourth piece: search
There is a fourth job that sits under all three. Search is how people find you when they do not yet know your name. Someone types a question or a service and a place, and a list appears.
Being on that list depends on plain things done properly. Pages that answer the questions people ask. Listings with matching details. A site that loads quickly on a phone. Other reputable sites that mention you, which is one of the quiet benefits of PR.
Search rewards the same habits as everything else here: clear, specific, current. It is not a trick, and nobody can promise you a position.
The order to do them in
When a firm is behind on all of this, it helps to know where to begin. The order matters because each step feeds the next.
First, decide what you are saying. Who are you? What are you about? Why should someone hire you? Until those three answers fit on one page, everything built on them will be vague.
Second, fix the places you control. Put the answers on the website and in your standard documents. PR and social media both send people to your website. If what they find is unclear, the attention is wasted.
Third, set a social media rhythm you can keep. Modest and regular.
Fourth, tell your news. Now that a curious reporter or prospect will find something worth finding, PR is worth the effort.
Firms that start at step four are the ones that say PR does not work.
One person or three?
A large company has a department for each. A small firm cannot, and does not need to. The volume is low. What matters is that the three are connected.
The project you finished becomes a page on the website. The same facts become three social posts. The same story, with a fact sheet and photographs, goes to two editors. One piece of work, used three ways, by a person who knows it happened.
This is why we treat all three as part of business management. They depend on someone noticing what the firm has done and making sure the world hears about it, on a calendar, with approvals. We describe that role in What an outsourced business manager does, and the weekly habit that keeps it going in A weekly marketing routine a busy owner can keep.
A note for regulated fields
If you work in health care, financial services or law, or you raise money from investors, there are rules about what you may say and how. Testimonials, results, comparisons and statements about returns are common trouble spots. The rules vary by profession and by state. Build a review step into your calendar, and have your compliance reviewer or counsel approve anything in doubt before it is published.