What’s the difference between marketing + advertising?
Feb 04 2009
At our presentation last week at Roam Atlanta, one of my colleagues asked me to explain the difference between marketing and advertising. It was a fantastic question, as many business owners use the two terms almost interchangeably.
First, let’s address the terminology. If you ever have a question about what a marketing term means, make yourself look smart by visiting the extensive marketing dictionary available on the American Marketing Association’s web site. Here is how the AMA defines marketing:
“Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”
This, by contrast is the textbook definition of advertising:
“The placement of announcements and persuasive messages in time or space purchased in any of the mass media by business firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/ or persuade members of a particular target market or audience about their products, services, organizations, or ideas.”
So what does it mean? First off, marketing is BIGGER. It encompasses value and managing customer relationships. (By the way, if you have questions on managing customer experience, you should listen to our interview with experience guru Mike Wittenstein on Gravity Free Radio). Advertising is also tactical while marketing is strategic.
Most importantly though,especially from a small business perspective is that advertising is PASSIVE. You put your message in front of as many eyeballs as you can afford and wait for the customer to make the next move. Marketing, however is an ACTIVE process by which you determine how you are going to reach your customers, persuade them to purchase from you and, after the purchase, make them happy.
The passive, impersonal nature of advertising, along with the staggeringly poor ROI usually makes it a poor investment for small business owners (unless it is meant as a brand awareness-builder to support an existing and ongoing campaign). However, ALL entrepreneurs need to build winning marketing strategies in order to compete effectively during tough economic times.
Focusing on value, message, experience and brand are all great ideas that can positively influence your company’s sales… And you didn’t even need to advertise.
Published by Erik Wolf under Advertising, Marketing Materials, Small Business, Strategy
Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson
Comment by Matt Hanson — February 4, 2009 @ 7:43 am
If advertising is a subset of marketing, than Marketing has to be both passive and active. Advertising isn’t all bad, it’s just that 99% of advertising is poorly executed. Once everyone is participating in online activites, social media, video, et al, the quality will go the same way as advertising. It is just that right now, everyone who is doing it, is invested in the mediums success.
In any one moment, the majority of people who call themselves marketers are a joke. There is a reason accountants in college think marketing is a lame business major. Because it is subjective, it breeds sliminess. We look to people like you to clean that up, just don’t diss on advertising. Advertising doesn’t have to be passive. Just improve it like you do for marketing online. The snuggie is proof that advertising still works, even for a startup.
Comment by Greg Bond — February 4, 2009 @ 8:32 am
Great comment Greg,
No, advertising is not all bad — the way it gets implemented in many cases is bad, used in place of a proactive marketing strategy (i.e., I’ve been advertising in the local paper/business journal/trade magazine for 5 months, why isn’t my phone ringing?) Advertising on its own is not an integrated marketing strategy; it’s usually best used as an overall awareness or brand builder. The problem is that a lot of entrepreneurs want to see it as a plug-and-play-pipeline builder and it usually is not.
And to clarify, I would never say “don’t advertise” as an absolute. In fact, I usually tell most business owners to make it the last step in their plan, once they’ve got the tools they need to attract and close warmer prospects. The other problem with advertising is that unless you’re selling an impulse item (like the snuggie) — and most of us in the B2B arena are not — business owners just aren’t prepared for the fact that when the phone does ring, they’re still essentially dealing with a stone cold lead. You need to get your sales and marketing processes finely tuned to ensure you can close a good number of those opportunities when they arise.
But I definitely stand by my original point here that advertising is not a strategy unto itself; it’s a tactic that’s used to further an overall marketing or business goal. And looking at the snuggie, let’s remember also that they are running an ad campaign that is likely worth a few million dollars at least; they are using advertising very well, but few startups without significant funding would be able to replicate that. They have also backed up their TV strategies with what appears to be some solid PR and social media savvy so even an ad-focused marketing plan like theirs has a few other moving parts.
Thank you for the comment and for challenging me on this.
Comment by Erik Wolf — February 4, 2009 @ 10:28 am