Differences between marketing and advertising

Marketing and advertising, although they sound similar, are actually not. Advertising is only part of a bigger game called marketing. Marketing involves the complete realization of a brand from research to design and from advertising to sale. On the other hand, advertising is a component of the marketing process which is nothing more than conveying the message through a variety of media to promote the product.

Advertising is one of the most important components of a marketing strategy and is also the most expensive. Advertising represents sending a message to the audience about your company, product or services. It also forms the behind-the-scenes work such as the process that involves forming different strategies and coming up with a suitable strategy to target the viewers. Strategy consists of planning things like placement of ads, deciding which media will be used, time, frequency, etc. Advertisements are generally placed through media like television, postal mail, newspapers, internet, emails, radio, magazines, mobile phone messages, flyers, billboards etc. The most common of course is television although online advertising is becoming increasingly popular as well.

The easiest way to differentiate advertising from marketing is to think of marketing as a cake, and if you cut the cake, advertising is one piece of that cake. Other parts of the pie are product market research, product design, media planning, public relations, product pricing, customer satisfaction, customer support, sales and many more. All these components or pieces of the cake must work independently but collectively to achieve the larger goal, which is to sell the product and build the company's reputation in the market. Marketing is a marathon process that involves many tasks that require hours and sometimes days of research. The research part of marketing takes longer because it involves a comprehensive understanding of people's behavior towards the product. Product design and advertising strategy development is also a time-consuming process. The only components that take less time are advertising and sales implementation. Marketing can also be considered a medium between consumers and the company.

But many companies often make the mistake of confusing advertising with marketing. They try to imitate big companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi in advertising, but they simply ignore the work behind it. A classic example of this is to take the case of a logo for example. Many business owners are so hysterical about their company's logo in their advertising that they believe it will simply bring in sales. But what makes a logo successful is nothing but the company's reputation and the logo should have its own character and should truly reflect the company's values. One must also remember that these companies spend huge fortunes on advertising, which new startups cannot do. Instead of spending unnecessary money on branding your product, you should invest money and time in communicating with consumers so that you can meet their expectations. After building a good reputation and growing into a large scale company, one can think of these great ideas. Educating consumers also helps because it will give them an understanding that you know what you are doing and that you are the best at doing it.

Smart marketers are aggressive in approach rather than passive. It excites the readers' minds by urging them to do something rather than just making them aware of the product. Smart marketers also bring up the names, addresses, and contact numbers of people who are genuinely interested in hiring your company through the use of aggressive marketing. Hence having a good marketing campaign speaks a lot about the company and its products and advertisements give the final touch to the hard work done by the marketers in selling the product.