Marketing vs. Advertising: What are The Main Differences

There are a lot of mar­keters and busi­ness own­ers who tend to use mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing inter­change­ably. The two terms and the process­es they cov­er are relat­ed, nat­u­ral­ly, but there are some dif­fer­ences between the two concepts. 

For busi­ness own­ers, know­ing the dif­fer­ence between mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing might be option­al to scale and grow, but the knowl­edge can become handy in han­dling a few busi­ness processes. 

For starters, when know­ing how to dif­fer­en­ti­ate mar­ket­ing vs. adver­tis­ing, you will be able to make smarter deci­sions in your marketing/advertising cam­paigns. You will be more pro­duc­tive when you con­verse about these topics. 

That said, the team here at Rosy Strate­gies brings you the inside scoop about the main dif­fer­ences between adver­tis­ing vs. marketing. 

Advertising vs. Marketing: Defining the Terms

What Is Marketing?

Mar­ket­ing refers to an ongo­ing process of ensur­ing that your ser­vices or prod­ucts are and remain com­pelling to your audi­ence, poten­tial mar­ket, and buy­ers. Gen­er­al­ly, mar­ket­ing is an involved process where you have to main­tain a good rela­tion­ship with your cus­tomers and clients. You need to put in the effort to make your cus­tomers sat­is­fied and keep them loy­al to your brand with effec­tive after-sales support. 

When dis­cussing mar­ket­ing vs. adver­tis­ing, one may say that the lat­ter is only a sub­set of mar­ket­ing. The core goal of mar­ket­ing is to cre­ate a strong busi­ness pres­ence that’s appeal­ing to cus­tomers. It involves mar­ket research, brand­ing, pric­ing, posi­tion­ing, and the like. 

What Is Advertising? 

As dis­cussed above, some experts con­sid­er adver­tis­ing a sub­set of mar­ket­ing because every ad cam­paign sup­ports your over­all mar­ket­ing goals.

Adver­tis­ing most­ly refers to paid forms of mar­ket­ing where you specif­i­cal­ly pro­mote the ser­vices and prod­ucts your com­pa­ny offers through paid con­tent. Adver­tis­ing may also include cre­at­ing sea­son­al cam­paigns, ad place­ment, or col­lect­ing valu­able prospect and cus­tomer info.

Oth­er adver­tis­ing activ­i­ties may include the following: 

• Brand build­ing to boost your reputation
• Build­ing awareness
• Reach­ing more peo­ple with social media posts
• Service/product high­lights

Think about it like this: mar­ket­ing tells us what the brand mes­sage is, while adver­tis­ing gets the mes­sage in front of your customers. 

5 Major Differences Between Marketing and Advertising

Now that we cleared the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences in the mar­ket­ing vs. adver­tis­ing debate, let’s give more con­text by explor­ing them fur­ther. By the end of this blog post, you will be able to tell how the two terms are different. 

1. Respon­si­bil­i­ties

Mar­ket­ing

Mar­ket­ing strives to ensure that a busi­ness is prof­itable from every seg­ment. As such, it takes care of things like: 

• Brand­ing: mar­ket­ing cre­ates the iden­ti­ty, vision, mis­sion, and rep­re­sen­ta­tion of your busi­ness. It’s who you are in the mar­ket and the thing that will stick in the mind of your customers.
• Com­peti­tor analy­sis and trend track­ing: ensur­ing you are always up to date with the lat­est trends and keep­ing a sharp eye on your com­pe­ti­tion to remain rel­e­vant in your industry. 
• Build­ing cus­tomer rela­tion­ships: con­duct­ing inter­views and sur­veys to ensure that the busi­ness meets cus­tomer expectations.
• Mar­ket strat­e­gy devel­op­ment and research: mar­ket­ing also ensures that a busi­ness stays prof­itable with com­pre­hen­sive research to see what’s trend­ing in the mar­ket and cre­ate strate­gies to suit those needs.
• Track­ing return on invest­ment: Mar­ket­ing experts also ensure that the busi­ness isn’t over­spend­ing. With the help of data, experts can cre­ate a mar­ket­ing bud­get that will cov­er all mar­ket­ing expenses. 

Adver­tis­ing

Now, let’s see what the respon­si­bil­i­ties of adver­tis­ing are:

• Ana­lyz­ing your cus­tomers: adver­tis­ing helps to get to know your cus­tomers bet­ter and, in turn, can help you cre­ate more pre­cise and effec­tive campaigns. 
• Adver­tis­ing plans and strate­gies: Spe­cif­ic process­es and strate­gies to cre­ate aware­ness of your business/products/services and, ulti­mate­ly, con­vert prospects to buyers/clients.
• Cre­ative pro­duc­tion: from short social posts to video mate­r­i­al, adver­tis­ing experts plan, research, cre­ate, and dis­trib­ute these cre­ative assets. 
• Deter­min­ing the best adver­tis­ing chan­nels: rely­ing on sound data, adver­tis­ers assess the most effec­tive mar­ket­ing chan­nels for busi­ness­es offer­ing the most val­ue for the investment.

2. Most Used Techniques

When look­ing at adver­tis­ing vs. mar­ket­ing, we can see that the two terms are chas­ing dif­fer­ent goals and, as such, will require dif­fer­ent tech­niques to reach those goals. 

Mar­ket­ing

• Inbound mar­ket­ing: using organ­ic strate­gies such as edu­ca­tion­al blog posts.
• SEO or search engine opti­miza­tion: by increas­ing online vis­i­bil­i­ty to search engines, mar­keters attract cus­tomers to your web­site with­out unnec­es­sary expenses.
• Con­tent mar­ket­ing: cre­at­ing com­pelling con­tent can attract the atten­tion of cus­tomers and can keep them interested. 
• Affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing: through part­ner­ships, busi­ness­es can lever­age the cred­i­bil­i­ty of their part­ners and reach more cus­tomers in the process. 
• Email mar­ket­ing: stay­ing in touch with cus­tomers through email with the help of pro­mo­tions and newsletters.

Adver­tis­ing: 

• Tra­di­tion­al radio, print, and TV ads
• Retail adver­tis­ing
• Dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing like guest post­ing, video mar­ket­ing, and social ads.
• In-appli­ca­tion mobile ads
• Bill­board ads
• Native adver­tis­ing

3. Pur­pose 

Both strate­gies want to ensure that a busi­ness stays prof­itable, but still, they can devi­ate in a few ways: 

Mar­ket­ing

• Gen­er­at­ing new leads
• New cus­tomer acquisition
• Keep­ing the acquired customers
• Keep­ing brand­ing consistent
• Cre­at­ing dif­fer­ent cross-sell and upsell opportunities
• Devel­op­ing new or per­fect­ing exist­ing products/services
• Track­ing the results of every mar­ket­ing initiative

Adver­tis­ing

• Attract­ing first-time customers
• Con­stant brand awareness
• Push­ing ads to ensure purchases
• Keep­ing cus­tomers sat­is­fied and happy
• Main­tain­ing a strong brand image
• Estab­lish­ing brand cred­i­bil­i­ty and reliability
• Moti­vat­ing loy­al cus­tomers to pur­chase again and again

4. Mea­sur­ing Success

Keep­ing a close eye on ana­lyt­ics is essen­tial to mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing. Track­ing and reg­u­lar­ly review­ing your met­rics can ensure busi­ness prof­itabil­i­ty even when costs tend to rise. 

But what are the dif­fer­ences between mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing regard­ing suc­cess met­rics? Let’s see: 

Mar­ket­ing

• Cus­tomer satisfaction
• Net Pro­mot­er Score
• Mar­ket Share
• Quar­ter­ly and Annu­al Sales Revenue
• Cus­tomer Life­time Value

Adver­tis­ing

• Engage­ment
• Con­ver­sions
• Reach and impressions
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

5. Gen­er­at­ing the Results

Last­ly, let’s see how these two approach­es gen­er­ate results for com­pa­nies. Because adver­tis­ing is lit­er­al­ly a part of mar­ket­ing, it should be evi­dent that it will be able to deliv­er faster results. At the same time, mar­ket­ing-relat­ed activ­i­ties are more long-term strate­gies that are meant to cre­ate a strong foun­da­tion for your brand for the future. 

Adver­tis­ing results can be pret­ty sim­ple to mon­i­tor. For instance, if you are run­ning a month-long cam­paign, you will see the results you’ve man­aged to gen­er­ate after a month.

On the oth­er hand, with mar­ket­ing, you are look­ing at a longer process. The busi­ness and the brand will con­tin­u­ous­ly evolve, cater­ing to dif­fer­ent mar­ket and cus­tomer trends, mak­ing the assess­ment of your results a bit more com­pli­cat­ed but not impossible. 

You can always check brand help, cus­tomer per­cep­tion, and over­all mar­ket­ing bud­get to see just how well you are doing. Chances are that if your mar­ket­ing bud­get grows each year, your mar­ket­ing efforts are pay­ing off. 

Make the Best Use of Both Approaches

These two terms seem to be two sides of the coin, but they aren’t entire­ly the same. Still, both should be tak­en seri­ous­ly, and busi­ness own­ers should make the nec­es­sary effort to improve their adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing strate­gies to grow their busi­ness­es and estab­lish their firms as cred­i­ble and trust­ed companies. 

If you are look­ing for a sea­soned mar­ket­ing agency in Mia­mi that can help you with both mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing, feel free to reach out to us.