While the two terms are often used interchangeably , here is a difference between marketing and advertising.
Marketing is the bigger picture. It is the whole set of the activities involved in transferring goods or services from you to the consumer.
Advertising, on the other hand, is just one facet of marketing. It is the act of paying someone to deliver your message to the masses. Your advertising is just one small part of your marketing; it’s the part that issues the invitation to visit or call the business.
When you think about it, effective advertising is merely a persuasive conversation between you and your prospective customers. Just as you can’t force your political or religious views down people’s throats, your advertising will never convince them to buy a product or service they don’t need or don’t want, no matter how many times you shove your message at your target audience.
When your goal is to persuade someone, you must get to know them first. This is true whether your goal is to persuade someone to change their political stance or their religious views, not to mention trying to persuade them to change what they buy and from whom!
You’ve probably heard the advice of “Just get your message in front of more eyeballs and you’ll be successful.” If you’ve been unfortunate enough to try to follow that advice, you’ve probably already learned that the wrong message, even when it’s delivered the right people, still delivers mediocre results. It’s essential to create engaging and compelling copy to act as an INVITATION to your business.
If the web has changed advertising, it’s only because it provides irrefutable evidence to the advertiser that the poorly crafted message is quickly ignored. In traditional media, the advertiser can sooth his troubled mind with the assurance that he/she is seeing his/her ad, so naturally his/her customers are seeing the ad as well.
The web takes those soothing thoughts and breaks them into a million pieces. Poorly crafted messages leave a trail of log files which show in black and white the disinterested visitors leaving the site in droves or worse yet, the visitors that never came.
Ah… accountability and advertising. David Olgivy never had to deal with that ugly state of affairs.
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