There has been an inkling of a trend towards PR jobs taking on more marketing communications responsibilities.

I cannot say it was more than a feeling.

But I came across this article in PR Week from October 2012 that seemed to crystallise those thoughts a little more.

For B2B clients the recession has concentrated minds even more on ROI although it was always important.

PR can generate valuable SEO content, links, downloads, branding, Google profile and leads of course.

However the perception is often that PR is a branding exercise alone although this is outdated thinking.

B2B companies that are not of a more substantial size need their marketing needs dealt with as much as their reputation management.

I am helping implement a new website and often help with social media and copy and occasionally marketing strategy – a much misunderstood and vital skill for PR professionals and everyone else.

Those skills that I had left behind and thoughts peripheral now are proving useful again.

So the PR Week article pointing to a merging of roles and more marketing responsibilities being placed on PR professionals is no surprise.

Is it the way things are going?

Perhaps PR professionals want to be marketing heads and not a subset of marketing.

Will PR professionals have to be marketers as well however much they want to remain pure PR practitioners?  They might have no choice.

Tags: do PR professionals need to be marketers, Is PR merging with marketing, Marketing, PR, PR careers, public relations

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 12th, 2013 at 12:03 am and is filed under Careers, Marketing, PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.