Combining marketing & communications does not deliver better ROI. Quite the opposite

Executive leadership often lumps marketing and communications together in organizations. I have scanned hundreds of job postings—including those from non-profits—that think they’re saving dollars by combining two roles into one person—who, if they are lucky, lend expertise while wearing one hat and holding on to their other hat with a tight grasp. Or, perhaps they are just “good enough” with both.

Why do organizations combine marketing and communications? Not because they’re the same thing—they’re not—but they are often not very well understood for their unique values.  When they’re separate but working together, you have a much better shot at making sure messaging, audience strategy, campaigns, internal communications, and brand reputation all move the same big goals, just on different but parallel tracks.

But let’s be clear: alignment is not the same as interchangeability. Marketing and communications each bring their own strengths, solve different problems, and require different skills to succeed.

Marketing boosts awareness, positioning, conversion, growth, and revenue. Communications brings clarity, alignment, understanding, reputation, and trust—with every audience you care about.

Here’s the challenge: in many organizations, the lines don’t just blur at a functional level. They blur the scope of sourcing, leaving roles expecting one team (or even just one person) to juggle both disciplines.

That’s where things usually start to break down.

• Teams get stuck just executing and maintaining, instead of building scalable systems and a real strategy.

• Campaigns turn into one-offs, generating a lot of noise with no real conversion strategy behind them. Content gets published everywhere, but without a clear audience or purpose.

• Long-term strategy and planning get buried under a pile of daily “urgent” requests. Internal messages fly out before managers are even ready to answer questions, let alone get the media coaching they could benefit from. 

• And as the work gets more reactive, it’s easy to mistake activity for impact—lots of views, strong engagement, constant output, but not enough connection to bigger goals or real results.

Marketing and communications need to operate completely separately. But they do need clear lanes, realistic expectations, and enough capacity for each discipline to do what it does best. 

Clarity of function drives clarity of results, and marketing and communications are no exception.

Invest in both roles. You will see the ROI!  And do you know what is even better than investing in two full-time roles?  Contracting with a team of experts, Prepone Consulting LLC delivers. Our team has it all. With us, at a better rate than hiring employees, you get the full force of a team of multipliers!

Call us for a free consult before you hire.