Is Marketing and Advertising the Same Thing?

Advertising is one of the most important components of a marketing strategy and also the most expensive. Advertising constitutes sending the message to the public about your company, product or services. It also constitutes ‘behind the scenes' work, like the process of involving a formation of various strategies and coming up with a right one to target the viewers. This strategizing consists of planning things like placing ads, deciding what media outlet to use, what time, frequency etc. The advertisements are generally placed via mediums like television, snail mail, newspapers, internet, emails, radio, magazines, mobile messaging, flyers, billboards etc. The most popular is of course television, although advertising on internet is becoming increasingly popular too. The easiest way to differentiate advertising from marketing is to consider marketing as if it were a whole cake. If you cut the cake in pieces, advertising would be one of the pieces of that cake. The other pieces of that cake are market research of the product, product designing, media planning, PR, product pricing, customer satisfaction, customer support, sales and many more. All these components or pieces of cake should work independently but collectively in achieving the bigger goal i.e. sell product and build the company's reputation in the marketplace. Marketing is a marathon process involving many tasks that involve hours, sometimes days of research. The research part of marketing takes the longest time to complete, as it involves thoroughly understanding the behavior of people towards a product. Designing the product and developing advertising strategy is also a time consuming process. The only components that take less time are executing the advertisements and sales. Marketing can also be perceived as a medium between consumers and the company. Many companies often make the mistake of confusing advertising with marketing. They try to appear to be as big as companies like Coke and Pepsi in advertising but they simply ignore the work that goes behind that. A classical example of this is to take a look at the company logo. Many business owners are so hysterical about the logo of their company in their advertisements that they think that it will simply bring in huge sales. But what makes a logo work is none other than the reputation of the company. The logo must have a feeling attached to it and should truly reflect the company's values. We should also remember that some companies spend fortunes on advertising, which a new start up business just can't normally do. Rather than spending unnecessary money on branding your product, one should invest money and time in communicating to the consumers to address the expectations. After building up a reputation and growing a company, you can begin to think up these lavish ideas. Educating the consumers also helps, as it will give them an understanding that you know what your doing and you are the best at what you are doing. Smart marketers are aggressive in approach rather than passive. They provoke reader's minds by prompting them to do something, rather than just making them knowledgeable of the product. Smart marketers also bring home the names, addresses and contact numbers of people who are really interested in hiring your company by employing aggressive marketing. Thus, having a good marketing campaign speaks a lot about a company and their products. Advertising gives that finishing touch to the hard work completed by marketers successfully selling a product.

Your Greatest Asset

Your greatest asset is your own customer list. These people have already purchased something from you in the past. If you've delivered as satisfactory product, they are very likely to buy from you again.


The easiest sale you'll ever make is to an already established customer of yours. They already trust you. They feel comfortable in dealing with you. You've delivered what you said you would so a certain degree of trust has already been established. Your customers are probably quite confident that you wouldn't sell them something that wasn't in their best interest.

The high road to increased profits always takes the route of established customers. There's always an expense associated with finding a new customer. Regardless of the marketing method used there's always an investment required in establishing a customer whether in terms of real dollars or human capital. Once you have a customer, any subsequent sale is made without the cost of locating that customer. The cost or finding a new customer is proportionally much higher than the cost of retaining an existing customer.

Keys To Success

The secret of capitalizing on your customer base is to continually feed them with new products and services you know they'll want. This is no time to diversify into completely new areas. Everything that you make available to your customer list must be compatible with what made those people customers to begin with.

Whatever subsequent products and services you offer must be related in some way. Think of your customers as belonging to a specific group. They're gardeners or small business owners or health enthusiasts. Whatever you offer must fit that product niche.

Always be on the lookout for new things you think your customers would gladly pay for. And give customers first crack at any of these new products and services. If you can offer a discount, that's even better. By letting them in on new products and services, you're giving them priority customer status, an added value of doing business with your firm.

Be careful not to overdo it. You don't want to annoy anyone, least of all your customers. Allow enough time and space between customer contacts. How much time you allow between mailings or calls depends on the nature of your business.

Examples

When a clothing store receives a shipment of new designs, they should first notify all previous customers who've purchased in the same price range. All the store has to do is contact these customers by phone or by mailing invitations to a special event where this new line is unveiled. Suggest to customers how additional new outfits can be created by mixing and matching and you've provided an extra service that will help retain customers.

This approach would seem natural for a wholesaler who relies on distributors or retailers to act as re-sellers. By showing your new merchandise and suggesting ways to move more of it, you're providing a valuable service while keeping in touch with your customers.

A self-published author of book on camping tips, should come up with natural additions to his product line to sell to buyers of his book. Things like maps of parks, local facilities, lists of "must-see sites" or specialty camping equipment, could all be add-ons made available to the author's buyers.

One final note; in order to start making more sales and build your business empire – you must become an avid student of lead generation and marketing strategy – the high-payoff items necessary for you to magnetically attact new clients to skyrocket your profits.

By John Hoer from: www.articlecity.com