Many people confuse marketing with advertising or vice versa. They are both very important to your business but are very different indeed. Knowing the difference is essential to putting your company on the road to growth and profits. Marketing is a series of systematic planning and activities and research and development which ultimately leads to the consumer purchasing a product or service. Advertising is act of calling public attention to a good or service by paid promotions or (advertisements). The best way to describe this would be that marketing uses advertising to achieve its goal of selling products or services to consumers.
After finally exploring the definitions of the two it is easy to understand why the difference can be a bit confusing to the point that some people think of them as the same thing, so lets take a closer look at the two.
Advertising
Advertising is only one single component of the marketing process or plan. It’s the part that attempts to get the word out about your business as a whole, brand, product, or services that you offer. Advertising includes placement of ads including but not limited to newspapers, billboards, magazines, television, radio and the internet. Advertising is usually the largest portion of a budget in a marketing plan with public relations not far behind in the budget.
Marketing
The American Marketing Association defines Marketing as a series of business processes taken by a company to develop, communicate with and manage its customers. Marketing includes components, such as market research, product development, product pricing, sales strategy, Advertising, customer support and public relations. The purpose of Marketing is to unite sellers who have something to offer in terms of goods and services and buyers who are in need of a certain good or service.
The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement. Advertising only equals one piece of the pie in the strategy. Think of marketing as everything that an organization does to facilitate an exchange between company and consumer and advertising as one part of the marketing strategy which purpose is to spread the word about a good, service, company or brand.
