The key difference between marketing and advertising

Many people, even successful business people, often confuse marketing and advertising, using the terms interchangeably. This has always been true, but in the world of Web 2.0 and social media, the lines between marketing and advertising have become even more blurred, creating extra confusion. Much of what passes for Web-based marketing is actually thinly disguised advertising.

Marketing is an overall strategy for promoting a company’s products and services; a specific mix of activities designed to attract and retain clients and customers. It involves understanding the potential customer or client, their needs and wants and how the competition is—or is not—satisfying them. Advertising is an activity that supports a company’s marketing agenda.

Marketing

Marketing encompasses everything a company does to communicate with current and potential clients and customers. It is a process involving:

• Market research: Who are your customers and what do they want?
• Product development: Coming up with new ways to meet customer’s needs. This can mean creating new products or improving existing ones.
• Competitor research: Who are your main competitors, what are their strengths and weaknesses, and how can you meet customers needs better?
• Pricing: What is the optimal price point for your offering?
• Advertising: Communication intended to inform your audience and then persuade them to take action. This is often the largest part of a marketing budget.
• Public relations: Communication intended to present a company in a favorable light.
• Sales strategies
• Customer support

Marketing brings together all these functions to create an image that represents the entire company and its family of products and services. It does this by seeking to understand:

• The target audience, in order to create promotional campaigns that will be appealing to that audience
• Individual customer’s needs, to develop products that can better serve those needs
• The competition, to devise ways to stand out from the crowd

Marketing is a creative, consistent activity that keeps customers thinking about your business. Its main goal is to enable your business to connect with customers and help them understand the benefits your products and services can bring to them.

Advertising

Advertising is a marketing tool. An advertising plan details what media mix will likely be most effective in disseminating your message and at what frequency. An advertising campaign needs to fit into a company’s overall marketing strategy and may involve placing announcements, usually paid, in:

• Newspapers
• Television
• Websites
• Radio
• Direct mail
• Billboards

These announcements tell potential customers about the features of a particular offering. Advertising campaigns focus on a particular product or service and try to persuade the customer to try it. The advertising campaign’s main goal is to increase sales. But it’s a one-shot deal. An ad may convince people to make one purchase, but it can’t convince them to be loyal. It takes the combination of a good product and a strong marketing strategy to turn a sale into repeat business.

So, the key difference between marketing and advertising is that marketing is a customer- and relationship-centered strategy while advertising is a product- and sales-centered marketing tool.