Marketing and Advertising: What’s the Difference?
Marketing and Advertising are often used interchangeable but in reality they are not. Advertising is only one part of Marketing.
Marketing is the complete process from researching who the customers are, how and where they prefer to buy for how much, to designing how to offer what you have as a product or service for sale.
Advertising, on the other hand is a component of the marketing process which is composing the right message and sending it through a variety of mediums to promote the product.
Marketing is a comprehensive process involving quite a number of elements and the most valuable being detailed research. The market research takes the longest as it involves thoroughly understanding the behaviour of people towards your product or service. Marketing on the whole is the connection between your customers and your business.
A good way to differentiate advertising from marketing is to think about marketing as a pie and the slices of the pie being advertising, market research, customer research, product designing, media planning, PR, pricing, customer support, sales and many more. All these components or pieces of the pie should work independently but collectively achieve as the outcome selling your product or service and build your reputation in the market.
Advertising is a very important components of a marketing strategy and can be the most expensive if the message does not touch the customer. Comprehensive customer research is the surest way to find what message your customers are looking for. In fact….the more work is placed into this part of your marketing the more successful your Advertising and every other part of your Marketing will be.
Smaller businesses make the mistake of confusing advertising with marketing. They try to copy big companies like Coke and Pepsi in advertising and do not consider the work that goes into the detailed research before an Advertising message is put together.
For example, often business owners place great emphasis on getting their logo into their advertisements and think that it will simply bring in the sales and create their ‘brand’. But what makes a logo work is the reputation of the company, not the logo itself.
Consider that large companies spend huge budgets on advertising which a small business can’t. Rather than spending unnecessary money on branding your product, communicate clearly to your consumers that you can address their expectations. Educating the consumers will give them an understanding that you know what you do and are best at doing that. Advertising is part of building your reputation which is what a branding is all about
Smart advertising should prompt your customers to take immediate action, whatever the action is you want them to take. Make sure you are clear on this, particularly online!
Have I help to clarify the difference between advertising and marketing in your mind?
