Marketing vs Advertising
Marketing and advertising… common business terms that people generally confuse for the same thing. From the customer’s perspective, there might not be the need to distinguish the two from each other. However, from the business side, the terms need to find proper explanation and differentiation. Finding and emphasizing the major differences between the two would help us never confuse them ever again. Especially, this is crucial if you desire to expand your knowledge of the marketing world. Our story will tell about marketing and advertising separately and help us arrange the terms in order.
What is “Marketing”?
Marketing is the set of all activities that the business undertakes to stimulate demand for their products. It includes much more than the promotional aspect and covers more areas of business than we think. The purpose of marketing is to deliver the created value to the right audiences.
Marketing is responsible for the right execution of value in the market. It serves as the intermediary between the business and the customers to connect them with invisible yet strong ties. Marketing must be in every business procedure, and it is not just a process defined in steps. It is a philosophy that defines how to satisfy their customers profitably.
Without marketing, businesses would not exist. As soon as the product or service goes out to its customer, they are already engaged in the marketing. Besides being a philosophy, it is also a part of the management process. Marketing defines the set of strategic steps that connect the value with the right customer.
Under the long list of what marketing covers, there is a lot about knowing the customer and the ways of reaching them. This process requires significant effort but shows its benefits right away. Knowing the customers makes it easier for business to design their further steps. The next logical step is to establish the connection, and the process goes on from there.
Marketing has come a long way, to the point that the integral parts of it became equally famous. The next chapter of our story is about one of its indivisible parts – advertising.
What is “Advertising”?
Advertising is a part of marketing. Marketing refers to the strategy that stimulates demand, and advertising is one of the numerous ways to achieve it. The simple definition of it can be “an often paid method of promoting a product or a service to the public”.
From a business’ perspective, marketing and advertising cannot survive without each other. More specifically, advertising relies a lot on the marketing plan of the company. The external activity of businesses must start from developing a marketing plan. Next up, the advertising comes to the stage by following what the marketing plan has established.
The above-described principle is the best practice to access the maximum potential of advertising. Without a thought-out marketing plan, advertising is just a gamble that is less likely to pay off.
At the end of the day, advertising has a mission of spreading the word. Some components like creative positioning and catchphrases help make it faster and more efficient. Besides these little tricks, companies must have a clear understanding of some other components as well.
The target audience is the starting point for defining what the advertising seeks to achieve. Determining the target group helps companies identify the methods and tools for reaching them. It may help in emphasizing the qualities of the goods that present the most value for their target audience. Additionally, businesses filter down their advertising channels according to the preferences of their targeted segment.
The choice of advertising channels depends on the segment. For instance, if the company targets youngsters and socially active people, social media is the most likely channel to use here. The same principle works for the other segments.
In conclusion, advertising is a component of marketing that spreads the word about the goods among the targeted segment. In the next sections, we will analyze how both marketing and advertising have changed throughout the years.
How marketing has changed during the last years?
Businesses always seek profit, and it is not a discovery for us. Those who succeed are always the ones that constantly follow the changing tendencies of their respective industries. Therefore, their marketing strategies adjust to changes as well.
Businesses are fully dependent on the public. If the needs and wants of the public change, logically the businesses must adjust as well. Marketing is the first component that lives changes in the market. The changes in specific companies eventually transform the whole market. This often results in new forms of marketing emerging and conquering the business environment.
Digital marketing is one of the relatively new branches. As the digital world surrounds us in every millisecond, the marketing trends reach out to “abuse” that potential. Especially during the last decade, the effect and popularity of digital marketing have multiplied. Consumers can access digital content by a simple unlocking of a smartphone in seconds. This gives the businesses endless opportunities to pull consumers into their sales funnels.
As the world around us flourishes, businesses have more opportunities to capture new customers. In that sense, digital marketing provides some valuable benefits that others simply cannot. Digital marketing has the ultimate traceability. The whole process from pushing the marketing activity and pulling the customers can be tracked and reported.
Moreover, there is an analytical side to it as well, which can find its usages in better marketing later on. It is fair to say that digital marketing channels are not a guarantee of success. However, they increase its probability, because it represents more targeted marketing, rather than a shot in the dark.
Today’s marketing-saturated world overwhelms consumers with so much content to absorb. It came to the point that traditional marketing faces ignorance from consumers. People started filtering the marketing activity targeted on them. It is becoming less likely to attract customers with simple actions.
Content marketing is a perfect example of “tricking” the way to the customer’s heart. This type of marketing does not promote a good or its benefits. It rather concentrates on stories and character and tends to present unique experiences around the brand or the company. More likely objectives of content marketing are to promote brand awareness and build an image in customers’ minds. After ensuring the latter, it becomes simpler to attract the customers by establishing emotional rather than direct connections.
How advertising has changed during the last years?
The advertising universe has come a long way and branched to numerous unconventional methods throughout the years. Modern marketing is an answer to the “how?” question because it is the plan that acts as a guideline. Whereas advertising is the “what?”, and represents the actions needed to execute the marketing plan.
Being part of the marketing, advertising has its smaller branches. The list includes online advertising, print advertising, outdoor advertising, product placement advertising, guerrilla advertising and many more. Some types like mobile advertising and social media advertising are relatively younger. Each advertising type has its advantages and points of difference, which make them suitable for accomplishing specific marketing objectives.
Digital advertising has lived an exponential growth during the last years. With the development of technologies, companies started spreading digital content, which provides endless room for imagination and creativity
. Digital marketing can be proud to be the most accessible and widespread mode these days. The companies now have an opportunity to reach their customers at every second and at any location.
In comparison with digital advertising, traditional types like print advertising or broadcast advertising have more limited options. Certain conditions need to coexist with them to provide real value. Print advertising starts losing its popularity to digital advertising, as very similar media exits in the digital format as well.
Broadcast advertising has to work in combination with popular events. In these cases, the advertisers use the fame of another event and squeeze the advertising in. Mostly, the consumers cannot skip the ads and are exposed to the advertised content.
Product placement still has its place in the advertising market. Surprisingly, it is one of the oldest forms of advertising, which is still enjoying popularity. The clear advantage of product placement is that the consumers see the advertised good in a more natural environment.
During TV shows or movies, the businesses insert certain goods into the daily lives of loved heroes. The love of beloved heroes transforms into the popularity of the advertised goods.
Guerrilla advertising is one of the more unconventional methods of advertising. They introduce mostly interactive content and invite consumers to be involved in an activity that includes the advertised good. This method does not necessarily boost product sales but generates interest and positive reactions. The generally lower budget bets the success on mostly word of mouth and social media.
Our article today carried the purpose of putting famous terms into correct places. The terms “marketing” and “advertising” can be confused to mean the same thing. The differences between these two are well known to businesses, as their day-to-day activities involve both. As casual definitions, marketing is the plan and advertising is the execution. With the advancement of technologies and changing human habits, both experienced drastic changes. Due to these changes, the business environment changed a lot as well. Therefore, those who adapted are the ones enjoying the benefits of the changes. That is it for today, be sure to check out our website for more posts like this.
