It’s not uncommon for people to use marketing and advertising interchangeably. After all, both are about engaging customers, using data to make decisions, and attracting new customers through creative strategies.
But while there may be crossover between marketing and advertising, they are wholly unique. Not only do marketing and advertising have entirely different approaches, goals, and budgets, they both have unique effects on their intended audience.
Let's explore the similarities and differences between marketing and advertising, including a walkthrough of their definitions and formats.
What Is Marketing
How do you define marketing really? It's a broad, umbrella term that nests multiple business processes under a single department. For example, social media, content marketing, and market research all come under marketing.
Marketing often takes a relational approach to customer awareness, conversion, and retention. Rather than just capturing single leads or closing a sale, marketing works to nourish and retain relationships through strong brand interactions, a great customer experience, and positive customer service. The objective isn't merely to complete transactions but to develop enduring connections with buyers while cultivating a favorable reputation among the public.
Major Types Of Marketing
Marketing comprises many different strategies, functions, and considerations. Many of these focus on larger audiences, intending to attract customers and guide them through a buyer's journey.
One of the most popular of these includes inbound marketing, a customer-centric strategy that provides value to customers through pictures, videos, blogs, and more. The goal is to have meaningful conversations around a brand that may eventually lead to a deal without the poking and prompting of traditional sales. This approach centers on pulling prospects toward your company naturally by offering high-quality, helpful materials rather than interrupting them with aggressive pitches.
Inbound marketing tactics include:
On the flip side, outbound marketing is about seeking leads more directly. Rather than creating and distributing content that draws people to your business who are already looking for your kind of solution, outbound strategies push messages to a wide audience of potential customers. This technique broadcasts your company's information across broad demographics.
Some of the most common outbound tactics include:
- Radio and podcast ads
- Event marketing
- Cold outreach
- Television commercials
- Banner advertisements
What Is Advertising?
Advertising is a function of marketing that promotes specific brand messages to a target audience, also used for driving brand awareness, hopping on market trends, and telling stories that get people to engage and maybe even make a purchase directly.
Advertising is less focused on relationships and more focused on drawing attention. It's a one-way form of communication that doesn’t traditionally allow for audience interaction. Once an ad has attracted a lead, it will be up to the marketing team to nurture and retain it over time.
Unlike marketing's conversational nature, advertisements deliver messages outward without expecting customer dialogue in return.
Major Types Of Advertising
You can divide advertising into two main buckets: digital and traditional. While the lines between digital and traditional advertising mirrors how interwoven technology has become in our daily lives, it’s still handy to define the two:
- Digital advertising is about serving ads through gaming apps, news websites, social media channels, email inboxes, and other digital platforms across the internet. Nearly every brand strives to have a digital advertising footprint. Online promotions appear virtually everywhere on the internet, from video pre-rolls to sponsored posts.
- Traditional advertising leverages print formats, including billboards, mail slips, and newspaper ads. The ultimate goal is to reach a large audience to create awareness of products, services, and brands. Promotions like print magazine spreads, brochures, leaflets, and broadcast commercials fall into this category.
In the past, both approaches were required to attract the highest number of leads. With such a wide variety of preferred sales channels, it’s only natural that blending traditional and digital advertising into one broad marketing mix is a common practice.
However, remember that every digital and traditional channel requires time, effort, and investment, and not every one will see a substantial return. Depending on your brand, your audience may be highly receptive to in-person activations and not fans of social media ads. Or, you may be reaching consumers who are likely to convert while gaming but will ignore print ads.
How Marketing and Advertising Are Similar
Both marketing and advertising functions are used to accomplish a similar mission. Let's explore some of the similarities they share across brands and industries.
Purpose
The main intent of marketing and advertising campaigns is to generate revenue. This includes capturing leads, encouraging more purchases, and garnering the largest number of views and brand ambassadors. Both frequently work with digital media and leverage content and current events to their advantage. Each aims to expand reach and secure as many prospective buyers as possible while increasing sales of goods or services.
Strategy
Marketing and advertising both focus on the major tenets of promotion. Each works to craft and refine messages that make the most sense for your audience, enhancing your profit outcomes.
This involves using emotional, logical, and creative components that craft a compelling incentive to take the next steps. Both attempt to understand what buyers desire and convince them to choose their company through various psychological appeals and visually striking elements.
Research
Data is an enormous component of marketing and advertising strategies. Both usually develop them in-house, working together to sift through metrics and track favorable outcomes. Teams in each area gather as much available information as possible to identify their target demographics and determine optimal methods for connecting with prospective and existing buyers.
Additionally, marketing and advertising research shares many key performance metrics (KPIs). These include:
Cost
Both marketing and advertising can account for a huge chunk of your annual budget. According to recent statistics, the average cost of ecommerce marketing sits between 7% and 12%. This includes the cost of advertising, which is rolled into the marketing budget for smaller ecommerce brands.
Additionally, marketing and advertising processes take time and effort to accomplish. While the types of labor are not often the same, the effort required for positive outcomes certainly will be.
How Marketing and Advertising Are Different
All forms of advertising are a function of marketing, but not all marketing strategies can be called advertising. Let's explore their major differences in greater depth.
Back-End Processes
Marketing involves many tasks that usually go unnoticed, both by potential audiences and by internal stakeholders. These encompass activities like identifying prospects, generating leads, analyzing competitors, and laying the groundwork that happens before any public-facing promotion begins.
Advertising is the process of bringing this back-end work to light by culminating everything into a neat little package. Its primary goal is to follow the roadmap created by the larger marketing department. While advertising represents a significant portion of the budget, its scope covers only a fraction of what the overall marketing function handles.
Think of it in terms of a one-way road versus a two-way street. Marketing works to create a two-person conversation between a brand and a consumer. On the other hand, advertising is more concerned with creating a message that talks to rather than with the audience.
Primary Research Focus
Marketing departments spend countless hours researching, tracking, and following up on all marketing campaigns for a business. This includes both inbound and outbound strategies, as well as digital or traditional formats.
Their investigations help establish a company's complete promotional blueprint, including elements like pricing structures and brand identity, while also measuring how well current initiatives are performing.
Advertising research only focuses on advertising campaigns, allowing ad-focused marketers to dig deeper into the content, reception, and KPIs of their final product. They may also report their findings to the marketing department, which acts as a home base for all data and metrics. This specialized examination observes patterns in consumer behavior, emerging trends, and demand for new offerings to provide insights about what buyers want and how they prefer to receive it.
Overall Budget
Marketing can comprise a substantial portion of your business’s overall budget, with advertising account for a sizable chunk depending on what kinds of tactics may work best in your target markets. You can break down marketing budget tranches in many ways.
Promotional spending, for instance, primarily goes toward creative development and distribution channels. Creative investments might include hiring graphic designers, copywriters, or art directors. Distribution covers securing ad placements like television time slots, radio airtime, physical billboard space, or contracting with outside agencies when work isn't handled internally.
General marketing expenses encompass the advertising allocation plus a wider range of related costs like software tools, customer research activities, channel specialists, and website creation.
Does Your Business Need Marketing and Advertising?
A successful business should have strong marketing and advertising departments, or solid investment in both disciplines.
While marketing is a great catch-all department for multiple processes, advertising is critical for showing off your company in different environments. Both must be implemented hand-in-hand to have any consequence on your brand.
Without the planning and strategizing that marketing provides, promotional campaigns could become directionless and wasteful. Similarly, without promotional efforts, marketing would face severe limitations in its capacity to connect with large audiences and showcase what you offer. A healthy knowledge of the differences between marketing and advertising, and where they overlap, is a great first step.
Marketing vs. Advertising FAQ
What’s the Difference Between Marketing and Advertising?
Marketing is the broad strategy for identifying customer needs and figuring out ways to meet them. Advertising, on the other hand, is a specific tactic within the overarching marketing umbrella. While marketing encompasses all messaging and connects to the brand, advertising is more about using paid channels to promote your products and services. Marketing encompasses researching your market, developing products, and positioning your brand. Advertising, as part of this process, involves creating commercials and ads on channels like TV and social media, to support marketing goals.
How Much Do Marketing and Advertising Cost?
The cost of developing and implementing a marketing strategy, including advertising tactics, can depend on your business and target markets. The average cost of ecommerce marketing sits between 7% and 12%, meaning that advertising accounts for a piece of that bigger percentage.
What’s The Difference Between Digital and Traditional Advertising?
Nowadays, it’s essential to have an understanding of the many advertising channels available. The two main types are digital and traditional, the former being about serving ads on digital platforms like games, social channels, email inboxes, and any other place on the internet, while the latter deals in printed formats like billboards, mailers, and newspaper ads.
What’s The Difference Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing?
Marketing can fall into many categories, with inbound and outbound being key types to understand. Inbound marketing is about creating valuable content that addresses customer needs, but isn’t designed to intrude on a user’s experience like traditional advertising methods. Inbound tactics include SEO, social media marketing, and email marketing. Outbound marketing is about seeking leads in a more direct way to audiences who may not be looking for your solution yet. Tactics under the outbound umbrella include radio and podcast ads, event marketing, and cold outreach.