The Communications Ecosystem

What’s the difference between marketing and public relations? Is promotion the same as marketing? Answers to these questions and more in todays blog demystifying the communications ecosystem.

Communications underlies just about everything an organization does. Doing it well involves a broad spectrum of skills ranging from strategy and analysis, to planning and project management, to art and craft.   

Getting all that work done, and ensuring it generates the desired return on investment, can be a challenge. 

Often, an organization won’t have all those skills available to them. Sometimes they have the resources, but not enough time to dedicate to a given project. Many don’t understand how to source the different skill sets involved, nor who might be best qualified to provide them. 

In fact, some of the most-Googled questions about communications are these: 
 
• what’s the difference between marketing and communications? 
• are public relations and marketing the same thing? 
• are advertising and promotion the same? 
 
The different practice areas in the communications ecosystem are hard to tease apart. Some components are universal and change very little over time, and others change profoundly and very quickly. 

The Root of It All

If your marketing, public relations, and internal communications aren’t a clear expression of your brand, you’re doing it wrong.  

Brand should be the root-system for the whole communications ecosystem: each practice area should be infused with its DNA, and all promotional activities should be designed to bear the kind of fruit that feeds and nurtures it long term. 

Pro tip: it can be difficult to figure out your own brand. Hiring a branding consultant will help you cut through the clutter and see yourself clearly. If you want to engage a pro to provide these services, ask them about their process, and ensure it will give you the ingredients to express your brand strategically, graphically, and tonally over time. 

The Practice Areas

Internal communications, public relations, and marketing: These are the core practice areas in the communications ecosystem. They have distinctly different goals, and different kinds of work associated with them. You can focus your attentions on one area, but if you work it as a system using all three – they can be a flywheel for growth.  

Checkit: If you increase employee productivity and strategic alignment using great internal communications, you will soften the ground for your public relations efforts, making increased goodwill easier to achieve. If you increase goodwill among your audiences using great public relations, you are softening the ground for your marketing efforts, making increased sales easier to achieve. And round and round it goes! 

Pro tip: to execute a comprehensive marketing/PR/internal communications program, you will likely need a team of people with a lot of different skills.  

If you want to engage a pro, or a team of pros, to provide these services, dig into their expertise in each practice area. You will often find that although they might provide services in all three, they have a particular strength in one.  

That might be just fine – their mix of capabilities might be a perfect match for your organization and the emphasis you need on each practice area. But it might not be fine – if you need deep expertise in marketing, you probably shouldn’t hire an expert in public relations.  

The Specialties

Public affairs/advocacy, lobbying, and media relations are specialties that flow from the public relations practice area. Each has a specific audience of focus requiring individualized relationship and partnership building over time. 

Investing time and energy into these specialties may or may not be a good fit for your organization. It really depends on what you are trying to achieve.  

If these are tools you want to use, keep in mind that you will need to develop authentic ongoing relationships with the audiences involved.  

Pro tip: if you want to engage a pro to provide these services, talk to them specifically about their network and their approach to fostering it over time. 

The Sunshine On It All

Promotion is the sunshine in our communications ecosystem. It provides the energy needed to achieve the goals in all three practice areas and their specialities. It is the sum total of the effectiveness of the paid, earned, shared, and owned tactics put in front of your various audiences.  

Pro tip: because building these tactics requires a wide array of skills, this is where you’re most likely to need to engage a pro.  

You can hire a freelancer or an agency to do this work for you, but before you do:   

• assess their skills by asking to see similar work done for other clients.  

• ask them to demonstrate brand alignment for each sample. 

• ask them to summarize the strategic alignment and effectiveness of their work. 

Once you’ve engaged your pro and gotten down to work on your promotional tactics, don’t forget the importance of brand alignment, strategic alignment, and effectiveness measurement.  

If you need help making sure all that happens, you might need to hire another pro!