Marketing vs. Advertising

Marketing and advertising are different concepts and understanding what they exactly are is essential. Marketing is related to all activities, starting from buying raw materials for the product, to introducing it into the market and selling it.

The principles of marketing are involved in each and every stage of product development and publicity. It also involves evaluating the demand for a product and sales generated by it.

Advertising is actually a small part of the entire marketing activity. In other words, it is a subset of marketing. It just involves campaigns that make effective use of the media for product promotion.

Marketing is related to providing good service and quality products to customers. On the other hand, we advertise our products to increase their familiarity.

Advertisements are printed in newspapers, newsletters, magazines and are published on the Internet, which has become one of the best channels for product advertising in this modern age. Television channels are also much sought after, for advertising products.

Also, marketing is different from selling. Selling just involves exchange of goods for cash. On the other hand, marketing ensures maximum customer satisfaction and client retention.

Marketing helps companies in building a brand, and advertising alone cannot help achieve that. Branding makes a product something more than just a mere commodity. This is reflected from the names of products who have an established brand.

Marketing is a long-term process, compared to advertising. If there is no product ready, what will the companies advertise for? The process of marketing begins from the idea of the product itself. So, advertising can be called the last or the final step in a marketing process.

Marketing is a never-ending process. It is a cycle which keeps repeating itself till the company is fully operational.

This means that marketing involves reviewing the performance of the products in terms of sales, analyzing faults, and technical errors in products, appointing committees of efficient managers to deal with the shortcomings, overcoming them, and maintaining the market share of the company.

Advertising may or may not be a continuous process. We often see that companies advertise on a large-scale while penetrating into the markets initially.

It may happen that the company might not require advertisements to sell its products as the word of mouth marketing, reviews and reports would be so strong and positive, that they will themselves drive the growth of the company. To reach this stage, it will take a lot of time and efforts on the part of the senior management and lower level employees.

Advertising is something which helps a company connect with its customers. It also includes creating a great psychological impact on the customers by explaining them how the product is superior and more useful than products of rival firms. So we conclude that both these functions are equally important and useful.