Marketing vs. Advertising

I’m often asked “What’s the difference between marketing and advertising?”. To put it simply advertising is a piece of your marketing strategy.

Marketing starts with your prospective customer – who they are, where they are and what they want. What problems do they have that need a solution?

Marketing includes:

Market research, including
- Customer research
- Competition research
Sales strategy
- Pricing
- Sales copy – add audio? video?
- Specials/discounts/coupons?
- Bonuses?
- Upsells
Advertising
- Branding – promote corporate name
- Public/Media relations
- General ads – TV, radio, banner ads
- Targeted ads – search engine ads, mail list, other newsletters/ezines
- Testing/tracking
Product distribution – collecting the money and shipping the product
Customer feedback/support

For example, you’ve started an online business, done the research, found keywords that relate to your prospective customers and set up a Google Adwords account. Now you write a 3 line ad that brings people to your sales page.

Advertising is just a small part of your overall marketing plan. The great thing about online advertising is that you can target your ads. When a car company pays $100,000 to run a single ad on TV, 97% of the viewers aren’t interested in buying a new car.

When someone types “new car prices” into a search engine the odds are MUCH greater that they are looking to actually buy a car and you can have an advertisement in front of them for under $1.

That’s why Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research says their latest forecast shows digital advertising almost doubling in the next 5 years (2009-2014).