Advertising vs marketing: What’s the difference?

Lots of people use these two words interchangeably, which is a shame, because advertising does not mean marketing, nor vice-versa.

Advertising is a subset of marketing. Advertising is paid messaging to promote a product or service. Marketing is an umbrella term that encompasses a much broader range of strategies, including branding, public relations, merchandising, phone calls, social media, sales, content creation, market research, emails, phone calls…as well as digital and traditional advertising. 

In essence, marketing is the overall “umbrella” plan for how to sell a product or service. 

Advertising, on the other hand, is one of the many tools used to execute that plan. 

Here’s a breakdown of what “marketing” means: 

Broader Scope

Marketing involves identifying customer needs, developing products and services to meet those needs, pricing them competitively, finding ways to distribute them, and promoting them effectively so they sell. 

Strategic Planning

Marketing involves creating a comprehensive strategy to reach your target audience (once you’ve identified your target audience), building brand awareness, and driving sales. 

Customer Focus

Marketing is about understanding your customers’ perspective, along with their wants, needs and pain points, and tailoring products, services and messaging to meet those needs. 

Specific Tool

Advertising is one of a variety of tools used within a marketing plan to promote products and services. Advertising can encompass internet messaging, print, broadcast (TV, radio and podcasts), out-of-home (signs, billboards, sides of buildings, etc.), skywriting, decorated blimps, sides of buses and automobiles, merchandise dividers at supermarket checkout counters, or anywhere you can place “sell” messages that your market will see.

Advertising involves paying for a message to be displayed to a target audience through all the various media channels mentioned above. The goal of advertising is to create awareness of a product/service and persuade consumers to purchase it. 

Always Part Of A Larger Campaign

Advertising is almost always part of a broader promotional campaign that includes other strategies such as direct marketing (phone calls, emails, direct mail, and social media), sales promotions, public relations, merchandising, or even paying spokespeople or influencers to endorse and tout your product.

In Summary

Marketing is the umbrella term for all the activities related to managing customer relationships and perceptions, as well as promoting products or services. Advertising, on the other hand, is a specific type of effort under the marketing umbrella that focuses on paid messaging to reach a target audience. 

Here’s a good way to think about it: Marketing is the “what” and “why” of promoting a business, product, or service, while advertising is the “how” of reaching potential customers.