If you have a business, odds are you have heard of advertising and marketing. You may have even thought they were the same since both are used to reach potential customers. What you and many business owners might not know is that there are actually lots of differences between advertising and marketing. Marketing and advertising involve and rely on one another, but they are separate fields that should not be interchanged with one another. Knowing the differences between advertising and marketing can help you create the perfect strategies for both.

Similarities Between Advertising and Marketing

Before we get into the differences, let’s look at some of the similarities.

As said before, both advertising and marketing let you reach potential customers. The end goal is to sell your product or service by promoting it.

Due to the rise in technology over the past few decades, businesses of all shapes and sizes can use advertising and marketing, especially since they exist in different media, including paid, owned and earned.

• Paid media is the most often used. This is when a business pays a publisher to display a message. Examples include billboards, direct mail, emails and broadcast, print, social media and search engine ads.
• Owned media is when a company uses its own channels to display a message. This include websites, blogs, brochures, press releases and social media.
• Earn media comes from third-parties, including online reviews, print articles and social media endorsements, such as influencers.

What is Marketing?

Marketing is the process of identifying a customer’s needs, determining how to meet those needs and then meeting those needs through the promotion of your product or service. The entire goal of a marketing strategy is to convince potential customers that you have the perfect product or service for them.

When creating a marketing strategy, you need to utilize market research and market analysis. Market research can look at your competition, sales trends and more while market analysis helps you find the best ways to hit customer engagement and product promotion. It also helps to develop a unique selling proposition (USP), which acts as a guide throughout your market strategy development. Along with the USP, look at your target audience through demographics, and research when and where to place advertisements that will get the audience’s attention. Keep in mind that developing a marketing strategy takes time and research.

If you haven’t guessed already, advertising is a subset of marketing. Along with advertising, marketing includes public relations, sales and distribution, consumer behavior research, media planning, community relations, product development, pricing, customer support and more. Although all these categories must be independent in their own way, they must come together for marketing to work. For the best marketing strategy, use a combination of the above in order to reach the most potential customers.

Start-up companies should rely most on developing a marketing plan before spending any money on advertisements; once you have the plan figured out and perfected, you should have smooth sailing.

Types of Marketing

In traditional times, there were only four channels for marketing to take place: print, mail, television and phone. This has evolved throughout the 21st century with the rise of the internet and e-commerce. In fact, modern technology has made it easier than ever to connect with customers.

There are several types of marketing that can be implemented in your marketing plan:

• Digital: This marketing strategy is done through computers or smartphones. It is most often seen in emails, websites, blogs and more. A subset of digital marketing is social media marketing, where people use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media. This is where the rise of influencers has taken place.
• Global: When you hear global marketing, think of Coca-Cola. Their marketing is seen on local, regional, national and international levels.
• Relationship: This marketing strategy looks at customer satisfaction in the hopes of retaining and satisfying customers, both old and new.
• Societal: Also called sustainable or green marketing, societal marketing looks at the greater needs of the world and puts those needs directly into the company’s brand.

What is Advertising?

Again, advertising is a subset of marketing. It is the process of actively promoting the company’s product or service through paid channels, such as an online ad or billboard. The goal of advertising is to influence the customer’s buying behavior so they buy your product or service; this can be done by exposing the product or service using data and information collected during the market research part.

Good advertising strategies can drive customer acquisition, boost sales and establish company branding. Advertising can attract new customers while keeping the existing customer base. To reach the most customers, advertise through different types of media. For example, younger customers might be best reached through social media while older customers often read newspapers or watch TV.

We mostly see advertising from companies that want to show off a new product or service; the advertisement itself is used as an educational tool. Companies have complete control over how the advertisement looks, how it is displayed and how it is essentially broadcasted to the public. This means advertising is usually the most expensive part of a marketing strategy since companies send many messages in different channels to reach the most amount of customers.

Types of Advertising

Like marketing, advertising mediums have evolved over the years. Customers now have access to search engines, social media, websites, blogs and more. In turn, these media give companies free rein to find customers literally anywhere.

There are several types of advertising:

• Traditional: This includes print (newspaper and magazine ads), broadcast (television commercials) and radio infomercials.
• Online: Online advertising has widely expanded to include search engines, promotional videos, sponsored content, Facebook and Google ads and more.
• Mobile: This includes automated dialers and app advertisements.
• Retail: For retail advertising, think of a mall or store. Any type of product placements or featured product displays is retail advertising.
• Outdoor: Think of billboards, banners and even branded vehicles, like buses or taxis.
• PPC: PPC, or pay-per-click, is an online ad placement that drives traffic to a website. Read our previous blog on PPC campaigns to better understand it.