Most of the people believe that public relations and advertising are one and the same. While, others consider there is no need for public relations as they do advertising. But advertising alone does not serve in making good business in the market. In fact there is certain amount of difference between public relations and advertising.
Although the common goal of both public relations and advertising is to build brands and communicate with their target audience. It is important to know that these both cannot fall under the same page. So there is a relative difference between public relations and advertising.
Knowing the basic difference:
The most basic yet important difference between them is that advertising is paid media while public relations is earned media.
In-depth understanding of Public Relations and Advertising:
| Public Relations | Advertising | |
| Purpose | To build reputation | To create awareness |
| Flow of Communication | Bidirectional | Unidirectional |
| Goal | Long-term goal(for example maintaining reputation among customers and other stakeholders) | Short-term goal(for example festive season sale of a product) |
| Credibility | More credible, as information is delivered through a third party:media | Less credible, as consumers do not believe everything by advertisement |
| Target Audience | Large group of target audience from government to target audience, suppliers to media and investors | Generally aimed to small group of target audience |
| Message control | Have less control because once the idea reached to journalist, he/she has the control over it | There is control over here as in when and where it can be seen |
Public relations and advertising are both considered to play an integral part of any company in promoting its products and services by reaching them to its respective target audience.
-Navya Penmetsa
