Understanding digital PR from a puzzled marketing student’s perspective
Content strategies, paid media and SEO are tools used by digital marketers and digital PR professionals. Are we doing enough to demonstrate the differences between the two roles?
You may be wondering why a student who is puzzled is qualified to write an article on public relations, so some clarifications are required. I am a digital marketing student who, at the beginning of my studies, heard about digital PR for the first time. I wondered what it meant and why it was different from digital marketing, especially when so many aspects, for example, search engine optimisation (SEO) and content strategy, overlapped with each other. As someone figuring out how to blend both worlds into a profession, I believe I am in the best position to write this and I would like to invite you to read on as I take you on my journey from one of confusion to finally getting clarity.
A recent discussion with my CIPR mentor made me think, what does PR mean in 2026? According to the CIPR Strategy 2025-2029, PR has evolved into a strategic management discipline for the boardroom and manages the honesty and ethical aspects of AI platforms and proving that authentic and trustworthy companies are more likely to have higher shareholder value. After I looked it up, I thought the answer looked quite different from the print media and press release-led world that was quite prominent a decade ago. What has emerged in its place is a more digitalised PR or digital PR, as the specialisation is more commonly known.
The changing public relations landscape
Digital PR would not exist without the solid foundation that traditional PR established. That history can be traced back to the late 19th century when it was little more than publicity stunts and media spectacles, later evolving by the mid-20th century into a strategic discipline dealing with stakeholder engagement and the protection of an organisation’s reputation. The internet’s arrival in the mid-90s led to an entirely new media landscape that became filled with blogs, social media and digital channels. These became part of the PR toolkit and, today, many practitioners distinguish digital PR as a field of its own. From a holistic perspective, the difference between the two is the platform. The DNA remains the same: using strategic storytelling to get brands to engage with their target audience.
My confusion, then perhaps, is not really about the discipline, but more about the delivery. When studying digital marketing, you learn about SEO, paid media, content strategy and all the channels that go with it. When you start reading about digital PR, you find those exact same tools sitting right there in the conversation.
So, what is the actual difference?
Digital marketing is about driving a commercial outcome and digital PR is about shaping how people feel about a brand well before they decide to buy anything. A paid Instagram advert pushing a product is digital marketing. A journalist writing a feature about a founder’s story, shared across social media and picked up by other online publications, is digital PR. They use the same platforms, but they are doing remarkably different jobs. Marketing brings in the cash, PR keeps it flowing, and once you understand that (like I have), the overlap stops being confusing. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign is a good example of this. The goal was not to sell moisturiser, it was to change the conversation around beauty standards, and that is exactly the kind of campaign that sits comfortably between both disciplines.
The most powerful PR tool is truth
Today, with the advent of citizen journalism regular people are doing the work of professional journalists albeit without the same editorial guardrails. This ability to influence should, however, not be underestimated. They are fact-checking, holding brands publicly accountable in real time and moving faster than most PR teams can respond. Cancel culture is very real, and brands are finding out that it is a lot harder to come back from that kind of scandal now than it ever was in the 90s or early 2000s. This means a brand can no longer afford to say one thing and do another, because the gap will be found and shared before anyone has written a press statement!
Authenticity is not a trend in digital PR. It has become a necessity and the first thing a brand should be thinking about. Brands like Patagonia have figured this out because their environmental commitments are actual business decisions and that kind of alignment is what digital PR, at its best, communicates to the world.
PR has always been about trust, whether built by engaging with a journalist with a press release or through a brand’s social media account navigating a very public crisis in front of thousands of followers. The platform changes but its core of open and transparent communications to build trust amongst its stakeholders never does.
While I am no longer ‘puzzled’, I am now figuring out where I fit into this industry and what my future career looks like. The question, however, that I keep coming back to is not whether I should be in digital PR or in marketing, is this: if the most powerful thing a brand can have in 2026 is trust, why are so many of them still treating authenticity like an afterthought?
Irene Ekong is studying a master’s in digital marketing and analytics. She is the founding president of a university marketing society, marketing and events intern, and a course representative.
Essential reading
The PR campaign challenging the idea of missing people as entertainment (CIPR members can log on CPD point for reading this)
Why the PR industry should embrace those who 'think differently'
How we did it: Creating a regional PR awards programme with a sense of pride