I Need Marketing

“I need marketing” is something that a good business owner would say. However, there is not a business in the world that doesn’t need marketing or advertising.

There is a surprising amount of business owners who do not understand the difference between marketing and advertising. As a business owner, you have to know where your money is going and how is being spent. Part of that is understanding how you’re budgeting for marketing and advertising is taken care of. On the surface, marketing and advertising seem to be synonymous.  Interchangeably, they are used to describe a process that helps you sell more products or services. However, there is a world of difference.

What is Marketing

The Marketing process involves design, creation, research and data mining. The purpose of marketing is to find out how to best align the idea of a product or service with the target audience. Marketing is a tool to define the product even more than the actual product does. Marketing is an umbrella term for many different business components, including product development, public/press relations, market research, company culture, company positioning, and even the sales functions as well.

There are four elements that make up the root of marketing. These are product, price, place, and promotion.

• The product (or service) is seen as an item that addresses a consumer demand/need. It could be a tangible good or an intangible service.
• The price is the amount customers pay for the product. Price determines the company’s profitability and whether a company will succeed or not.
• The place aspect of marketing includes strategies such as selective distribution, franchising, and exclusive distribution.
• The promotion includes forms of communication that delivers information about the product are considered promotion. Promotion may include elements such as public relations, advertising, and sales promotion.

Different Forms of Marketing

As a full-service marketing firm, we know that marketing comes in a multitude of forms and methods. A business may employ many marketing strategies for their business. Therefore it is essential to hire a full-service marketing firm when you start to grow as a business. You will benefit from a full team running these time-consuming operations. Here are just a few forms of marketing:

• Targeted Marketing – Targeted marketing is the process of identifying customers and promoting products and services via mediums that are likely to reach those potential customers.
• Viral Marketing – Viral marketing is the art and science of creating content that appeals to people individually and also as groups of shared interests.
• Digital Marketing – Digital Marketing is digital channels such as search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps.
• Guerrilla Marketing – Guerrilla marketing is about investing time, energy, and (particularly) imagination into a campaign, instead of primarily money.
• Brand Development – Branding has the following 4 phases: brand strategy, brand identity, graphic design, brand management
• Inbound Marketing – Inbound marketing is a strategy that consists of many forms – content marketing, blogs, events, SEO, social media and more. The goal is to create brand awareness and attract new business.
• Outbound Marketing -Outbound marketing is where marketers attempt to find customers, inbound marketing earns the attention of customers and makes the company easy to be found.

What is Advertising

Advertising is as a form of marketing communication. Used by companies to promote or sell products and services. Advertising is one of the components under the umbrella of marketing.

When it comes to media, there is “above the line” and “below the line” media.

• Above the line advertising includes tactics used to reach to reach a mass audience and build a brand for a new or existing business. These include television, internet, radio, magazines and billboards.
• Below the line advertising is advertising that is conducted by the company itself. These include direct mail marketing, door-to-door marketing, exterior location marketing, email marketing, and inbound marketing.

Different Forms of Advertising

Advertising supports marketing by creating the right exposure for a company’s products or services. It generates curiosity in the minds of the target audience, creates buy-in and ultimately works to support the overall marketing plan to convert to sales. Once you decipher who your target audience is, and how to best speak to them, your marketing plan then should include a strategy to best position yourself in the marketplace. Advertising comes in many different mediums. They include some of the following:

• Pay- Per-Click (PPC) – Paid ads on websites that receive heavy traffic. Networking sites such as Facebook have advertising programs which allow you to target very specific demographics.
• Social Media Marketing (SMM) – Social media platforms where you can promote your business because promoting yourself there has little or no monetary cost. In turn, you have to invest more time than money.
• Newspaper Ads – a traditional form of advertising that includes ads in daily and weekly newspapers to target specific cities and neighborhoods.
• Door Hangers and Flyers– Placing flyers in mailboxes or doorknobs is a good way to target a specific neighborhood or area.

Marketing and Advertising, What’s the Difference?

Simply put, advertising is a component of marketing. Marketing refers to preparing a product for the marketplace. Advertising makes your product or services known to a wider audience. Advertising benefits from the data and research collected by marketing strategies to best communicate the brand to the consumer. Marketing plans also tend to be more time-intensive than advertising campaigns.

At Faceless Marketing, our mission is to provide quality marketing and advertising services to businesses, big and small. We’ve had 25 years of successful campaigns and highly satisfied clients. Faceless Marketing is the marketing firm that you can depend on to give you the best results and greatest return on investment (ROI).  Reach out to Faceless for some consultation. Get a FREE quote on any of our services from printing to web design and SEO. Call 1-800-357-1299 or Shoot us a Message Here