Sunday, January 9, 2011

Advertising v/s Marketing : What's The Difference?

Advertising and marketing are both very different yet very essential components required for an organization to grow. Identifying the difference and practicing them well can put your company on the path to substantial growth. Often people confuse marketing and advertising.

Let’s look at the basic definitions of Advertising and Marketing.
Advertising : Advertising is bringing a product (or service) to the attention of potential and current customers. Advertising is focused on one particular product or service. Advertising is typically done with signs, brochures, commercials, direct mailings or e-mail messages, personal contact, etc.

Marketing : Marketing is the wide range of activities involved in making sure that you're continuing to meet the needs of your customers and getting value in return. Marketing is usually focused on one product or service. Marketing activities include "inbound marketing," such as market research to find out, for example, what groups of potential customers exist, what their needs are, which of those needs you can meet, how you should meet them, etc.

Now after going through these definitions it is easy to comprehend how the difference between advertising and marketing can be puzzling to the point that people think of them as one-in-the same. So let’s try and break it down a little bit.

Advertising is a part of marketing. It is a subset of marketing. Advertising includes planning strategies like which media to use. Should it be done through television, radio, billboards etc. It is mainly used to inform the target audience about a certain product or service. It tells them the products or service's advantages and benefits for them to be cajoled to buy the product. Advertising is the most expensive aspect of marketing process.

Marketing is a process that takes time, and can take days to research to make it effective. Marketing includes all the pricing, distribution, sales strategy, market research, media planning, and customer support, etc. all these components must be arranged and put into practice to achieve the best result possible.

Several times I’ve seen marketing to be considered as the big pie and advertising along with research, planning etc. as just a slice of that pie.

Basically, the main goal of both is to enhance consumer awareness.

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