Busting the myth! Advertising is the same as marketing 

Having a strong brand presence is essential for every company and marketing plays a vital role in the process. By showcasing your company’s value proposition to the target audience, you’re capturing their attention, hence encouraging them to become your customers. 

Now, when we talk about the terms like marketing or advertising, the first thought that comes into our mind is of those campaigns that we come across on different channels. 

Since these two terms are closely connected, the myth was born – Advertising is the same as marketing. 

However, as we all know that not all myths are believable, so I wanted to find out whether advertising is indeed the same as marketing or not. For that, I reached out to industry experience and asked for their contribution. 

This week, I’m featuring 11 experts that helped be bust this age-old myth of advertising and marketing!  

Table of content 

1. Kent Lewis 

2. Max Benz 

3. Sam Wright 

4. Rytis Lauris 

5. Andre Kazimierski 

6. Charly Chow 

7. Ali Payani 

8. Ravi parikh 

9. David Clelland 

10. Scott Keever 

11. Grace Everitt 

Is advertising the same as marketing? Let’s hear from the experts 

1. Kent Lewis 

President & Founder, Anvil 

Marketing, by definition, includes advertising, public relations, promotions, events, direct response and all things digital (marketing). 

Saying advertising is the same as marketing is like saying PR is the same as marketing. One is a subset of the other. PR, advertising and other marketing disciplines are a subset of marketing. Period. I’m personally annoyed when people in my industry (digital marketing) interchange the term “search engine marketing” or SEM with “pay-per-click” or PPC. One is a subset of the other. SEM includes advertising and search engine optimization (SEO). 

PPC only includes any form of digital advertising that relies on the payment on a per-click basis (typically text ads on Google and Bing). I wish more marketers were properly schooled, as I was when I graduated with a business degree and marketing concentration. 

2. Max Benz 

Founder & CEO, remote-job.net 

Many people use the terms advertising and marketing interchangeably, but there are several notable differences between the two. While advertising is a form of marketing, the field is much broader than just putting ads on Facebook. Today we are destroying the myth that advertising and marketing are the same. 

Marketing 

Marketing is the umbrella under which advertising falls. Other parts of marketing include public relations, product pricing, product distribution, sales strategy, market research, consumer testing, media campaign design and even community events. The term marketing can be used to describe every way that your business makes contact with a customer. In those terms, advertising can be a type of marketing, but it isn’t the only type of marketing. 

Advertising 

Advertising describes outreach to potential consumers with the goal of them making a purchase. Advertising is typically paid for and can be done on a variety of platforms. It is typically the largest expense that a marketing department will have. 

Advertising includes: 
 

• Direct mail 
   
• Newspapers 
   
• Magazines 
   
• Radio/podcasts 
   
• Internet 
   
• Television 

Your Marketing Plan 

Think of your marketing department like the team needed to build a home. To build a new home, you will need a large team with an architect, construction workers, project managers, plumbers, electricians, painters and movers. Each part needs to cooperate with the other parts towards your ultimate goal—building your house. Your marketing department is made up of several different parts that might seem independent, but they need to all work together to build your brand. 

3. Sam Wright 

Managing director, Blink 

The difference between marketing and advertising is essentially one of strategy versus execution. Both are important, but without planning your campaign properly then any advertising tactics you use – whether it’s paid advertising, social media or even SEO – are likely to fall short.  

We’ve worked on hundreds of campaigns over the years, and without a doubt this is the most common reason for things not working as they should. But when you combine great execution with a solid marketing foundation – in particular effective positioning and categorization – then the results can be transformative. 

4. Rytis Lauris 

CEO, Omnisend 

Advertising is definitely not the same as marketing. In a basic way, advertising is a type of marketing, where you’re trying to get people to see your product or service via paid channels. However, advertising generally gets a bad rep because it’s often done badly. The best advertising, the best marketing, is always about getting the right message to the right person at the right time. If so, then advertising becomes an indispensable part of your marketing strategy. 

5. Andre Kazimierski 

CEO, Improovy 

Advertising is one way to exercise a marketing method, but advertising is not marketing in and of itself. It is a subcategory that falls under the realm of marketing. Marketing is the way a company identifies the needs of their customers and meets them. It lets you promote the company through channels that a company pays for. 

6. Charly Chow

Strategy Director, thebrains 

Marketing is the broader discipline of building awareness for a product, brand or service offering, whereas advertising has commercial connotations and is primarily associated with paid media, such as PPC, display, Google Shopping.  

Marketing can involve organic methods of brand building, such as posting on social media, optimizing your website content for SEO, or email marketing to a subscribed audience. While it encapsulates advertising as a discipline, marketing is the whole of which advertising is a function, and the best marketers blend paid advertising techniques with organic marketing methods, to maximize reach and ROI. 

7. Ali Payani 

CEO, LookinLA 

Marketing is a full-scale approach to targeting, converting and acquiring customers, whereas advertising is a function of marketing. A sound marketing strategy incorporates advertising as a tool, but advertising is not intrinsically a strategy. Marketing is a more effective use of budgets because of its precision and scalability. 

8. Ravi Parikh

CEO, RoverPass 

Markting and advertising may go hand-in-hand, but it’s blatantly false to say they are the same. Whereas advertising aims to lead customers to your product through paid spots in public space and media, marketing is more subtle.  

Advertisements are clear in their message: buy this thing, here, now. The message is the purpose, and the entire design of an ad is built around making it easy for people to make that purchase. 

Marketing, on the other hand, aims to convince customers to align themselves with a product through establishing a brand identity. It involves the use of tools such as content writing and social media to establish your product as legitimate. Marketing often produces materials with a more complex message than ads, although they serve a similar purchase: promoting your product. 

9. David Clelland 

Director, Infiniti Tracking 

To an extent, I don’t think that the quote is entirely a myth. It works for many companies, and if we look closely, you have a good performance if you can reach your goal number and even go beyond it. However, in our practice, we like to think that performance doesn’t only mean you reach your goal sales number.  

It also means that you performed well with clients. You were able to learn, create relationships, and improve your craft. You don’t have to constantly reach your goal, although it is good, to have a good performance. 

10. Scott Keever

Founder, Scott Keever SEO 

Advertising is a form of persuasion between you and the customer, in which you promote a product or service, through paid channels. It is a small aspect of marketing, as a whole. Marketing is the process of predicting, analyzing, and creating the need for a product or fulfilling it. Marketing is an entirely different spectrum that gave birth to advertising, although now it has many variants and types it is still a component of marketing. 

11. Grace Everitt 

CEO, Tako Agency

This myth is rubbish. Advertising nests within marketing but is not the same; marketing involves a big picture strategy that touches multiple areas of the business. It is one of the many avenues by which those defined marketing goals are achieved. Marketing is the boat, and advertising is one rower of several. 

Conclusion

Well, it’s clear that even though advertising and marketing are related and the purpose is same, execution is what sets them apart. Marketers want to perfect their strategies, but when marketing and advertising is treated as one single aspect, that’s where most marketing strategies fail to deliver. So, with this article, we bust one more myth on marketing!