With digital marketing (like other areas of marketing) messaging is designed to generate sales or directly drive revenues in some capacity. For example, the marketing message of a large online insurance agency could be that they are offering the best selection and lowest prices since they have a low overhead by operating online. In digital public relations (and Public Relations as a whole) the message isn’t designed to be a direct promotion. PR messaging varies from highlighting how companies care about specific causes (or shows the core value of a business) to news updates put out by a corporation.

One common assumption is that digital marketing and digital PR are interchangeable or they can be used to replace each other – but this isn’t the case. On the topic of digital marketing and public relations, if your goal is to boost awareness and branding, these strategies should support each other – they shouldn’t replace each other. Whether you’re making sure the message of an email campaign is aligned with the messaging for a press placement, or making sure the visual imagery you’ve supplied an editor matches whats found throughout the rest of your digital footprint, your effort across these channels needs to complement each other.

In digital marketing, we have “target markets.” Those are basically the people you want to buy from your company (or if your website generates ad revenue then your target market would be people who would be monetized through these advertisements).

The right PR agency or PR expert knows your audience. The target audience (also known as “stakeholders” or “key public”) could be anyone with influence over the company. Your target market is just a single audience. Others can be things like the population of the town where a company has its headquarters, government officials, employees and stockholders.