CB Advertising Services, Inc.

 

 

There seems to be a great deal of confusion between marketing and advertising.  So marketing vs. advertising what difference does it make?  Well, let’s see; for one, marketing and advertising are not interchangeable.  However, advertising is often a significant part of marketing. They are closely related yet two different and very distinctive disciplines.  I like to think that marketing looks at your selling approach in a larger and boarder perspective. Advertising on the other hand is typically created by an ad agency or freelancer.  It represents your brand and your visual offering.  Direct mail, TV, radio, magazines, emails, mobile ads, Internet ads and more are examples of advertising. Often advertising will take a largest chunk out of your marketing budget followed by public relations and market research.

Marketing on the other hand is focusing more on overall strategy.  Marketing analyses your goal and tries to apply techniques such as internet data to find and analyze your potential clients.  Sometimes you have to tweak things just little in order to improve the result you are looking for.

You don’t have to get rid of your favorite graphic artist or web designer when hiring a marketer.  A good marketer will analyze several pieces of your business and try to find the solutions based on what is being presented.  In order to do so, a good marketer will want to get to know your company and your goals. He will ask who your target client is; to describe your ideal client; where you experience the best return etc..  He will also want to know what you expect from a marketing campaign. What in your opinion your business needs in order to become more successful.  After this fact finding interview he should be able to present you with a marketing plan that you can execute.  Note that there may be several levels depending on that your goals are and how fast you want to achieve them.  There are several marketing disciplines that you may consider to launch.  Remember this is not advertising, however it should be included in the overall marketing strategy.

Here is a list of some marketing methods that you might want to incorporate in your campaign. The key is to try to think things through and not to waste valuable marketing dollars.

Online  Marketing

Online marketing simply refers to a technique of attracting potential customers by advertising your products or services through websites, via emails, and online banners.

Offline Marketing / Traditional Marketing

This could also be referred to as traditional marketing. Pamphlets, direct mailing, billboards, press releases all are part in this process. From the economical point of view offline marketing can be quite expensive and is very difficult to measure.  This is where your overall marketing strategy plays an important role. The key is really to combine your online with your offline marketing in the most effective way.

Inbound Marketing

Here is an explanation by Rick Burns (HubSpot) “Inbound Marketers flip outbound marketing on its head. Instead of interrupting people with television ads, they create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in print publications, they create their own blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that people call them looking for more information.

Instead of driving their message into a crowd over and over again like a sledgehammer, they attract highly qualified customers to their business like a magnet.”

Reputation Marketing

Typically organizations have and often allow a rather high customer interaction with all the access through Social media and other online marketing techniques. This means that people can easily publish reviews, comments and complaints about your company that can show up in a web search result.  A negative input can affect your brand in a bad way.  So it is important to stay on top of these things in order to show the internet world your side before a comment causes some serious damage to your reputation.

Mobile Marketing

Marketing is about communication and this can definitely be achieved via the new mobile devices. Mobile internet usage is projected to overtake desktop internet usage by 2014. Imagine that an estimated 90% of text messages are read within 3 minutes. Plus 99% of all text messages are read. Now also consider that one half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices. So these numbers should definitely show the importance of mobile marketing that you cannot afford to overlook.

Social Media Marketing

Just as the name suggests this is an approach using social media platforms to build your brand and awareness of your service, product, concept, self, etc.  Social media can be defined as an “interactive platform” via which individuals and communities create and share user generated content. So yes, it is important to make sure you are present on these platforms that address your target audience.

So you can see yourself that marketing is a very complex discipline and very different from advertising, based on just these few specialties.  Marketing is an art and in today’s marketing and things are getting more sophisticated by the hour.  A marketing firm may be able to help with your advertising but remember advertisers are not necessarily marketers.

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This article was written by Caroline Blochlinger and first published on Online2PROFITS

Tags: Advertising, Inbound Marketing, Local Marketing, Online Marketing, Reputation Marketing, Social Media