Difference between Marketing and Advertising

The difference between marketing and advertising is subtle and marketing managers, as well as marketing students, should know the difference. There is much confusion between marketing vs advertising. The same confusion is not observed between marketing vs selling.

This is because the procedure of sales is very different from advertising. Sales and advertising both are subsets of marketing, but advertising is confused more with marketing than sales.

Hence, to clear the confusion on the difference between marketing and advertising, we are analyzing the reasons that both exist, the reasons for confusion between marketing and advertising as well as a “Distinguish between” table will which actually clear your mind on marketing vs advertising.

First let us understand Why Advertising and Marketing exist?

Why is Marketing used?

When businesses grow, they want to improve and attract more customers as well as retain existing customers. At such time, they approach the marketing department. The marketing department is in the job of analyzing customers, then analyzing the current business, analyzing the competitors and finally coming up with a plan to improve the organization as a whole so that more customers are acquired and more customers are retained.

To achieve this objective, marketing works on many different fronts.

• The first front generally is market research, where marketing tries to understand the customer in and out. It tries to understand the market as well as its own strengths and weaknesses.
• The second front is Advertising, where marketing advertises its own firm and how the firm stands out from competitors. The point here is to differentiate the brand from all others as well as to achieve various advertising objectives.
• The third front is to sell more products in the market. As a result, sales activities are also a part of marketing though nowadays you will find sales managers standing separately to marketing managers. This is because sales is more of a pressure profile and is focused on very short-term results which is why most companies are now separating sales and marketing activities. However, the advertising and marketing manager will generally be one and the same person.
• The fourth front and a very long front is to brand the company, to manage customers, to involve the community as well as to do the continuous activity which keeps on improving the firm from time to time. Marketing is more holistic in nature (read more on holistic marketing) and is it concerned with both – incoming customers as well as outgoing customers.

Marketing is very strategic in nature – It looks at the whole organization and determines the direction in which the company must move. It is has a long-term vision and hence it is able to distinguish the right from the wrong. If a department is making a wrong move, it is marketing which keeps that department in check if the department is not meeting the branding or holistic marketing criteria’s of the organization.

As a result, The scope of marketing within the organization is larger than advertising and advertising is a subset of marketing.

Why is Advertising used?

Advertising has a focused role in the organization. Advertising is the use of mass media or any other media vehicle to carry out communications between the company and the customers. Basically, marketing forms a vision and mission for the company. Advertising’s job is to communicate the values of the brand as well as to advertise and get more customers to the company.

Advertising can be used for many reasons. It can be used to attract more customers to a product of the brand, it can be used for brand recall or product recall, it can be used to introduce new products in the market or for many other things. Advertising is a part of the marketing plan and if the company has come up with a marketing idea, it is the work of advertising to communicate that idea.

Advertising has many cogs in the wheels. Creative agencies dish out ad ideas and creatives which are then approved by the marketing department. An advertising plan is then made which involves media planning and media buying. Finally, this advertising plan is implemented to reach more customers and make customers aware of the brand.

Important in advertising is to use the right media to position the brand correctly. Advertising is very costly in nature because of the rates of buying mass media. Another problem with advertising is that tracking of ads and their performance is difficult. However, this problem does not exist with digital advertising or digital marketing – probably the reason for the huge inflow of funds in digital marketing.

Thus, we can see that although advertising is HUGE as a business, it is one part of marketing and deals majorly in one way communications with customers. Lately, many two-way communications have come up due to use of social media and blogs.

But, within the organization, the scope of marketing is larger than advertising. On a customer level, because advertising reaches a huge audience, the scope of advertising is larger then marketing.

What is the difference between Marketing and Advertising?

To explain the difference between marketing and advertising, we have created a “distinguish between” table as shown below which you can refer to note the key differences between marketing and advertising.

Why people get confused between advertising vs marketing?

There is quite a bit of overlap between advertising marketing. One of them is understanding the customer. Both marketing and advertising involves market research to understand the customer and to implement marketing plans or advertising plans.

Similarly, both involve the principles of positioning as both marketing and advertising positions the brand separately. If a brand has to achieve premium positioning, advertising will buy the expensive media vehicles whereas marketing will place the distribution of the product in premium areas only.

Similarly, principles like market segmentation, targeting and others also play a role in both – marketing as well as advertising. Hence, people get confused with regards to the difference between marketing and advertising.

The statistical difference between Marketing and Advertising

We went on Google and made a search on google trends on how marketing and advertising are faring over time. As can be seen, advertising forms only 20% of the interest over time. The blue line is Advertising and the red line is Marketing.

Hope this article explained in detail about the difference between marketing and advertising. For any further clarification, please use the comments below.