Having an advertising plan as well as a marketing strategy, may at first seem like overkill as they seem like two concepts that share exactly the same objective and to a certain extent this is correct – they do have the same objective. Which is alerting consumers to products and services being sold by you and your business, but there are some differences. Understanding these will help your business to broaden its’ online audience and hopefully convert members of this audience into money-spending customers.
What Is Marketing and how do you market?
Marketing is a term that covers a number of processes such as, design, research, data mining and reviewing your direct competitors. Marketing defines your product or service and aligns it with your target audience or ideal client. This often entails studying the response of your audience and creating a format that will best influence that audience. Some groups of consumers respond better to images and words, whereas others are more led by slogans and straplines that best communicate your message. Your whole marketing strategy can be broken down into the 4 P’s – product, place, price and promotion.
The results you are looking for from any marketing campaign are – what kind of people can use the product, what kind of environment best suits the product and any other related information. The message is communicated through marketing materials, which create the tone and personality of the product as well.
What Is Advertising and how should you advertise?
Advertising is how you make your product or service known to your target or preferred audience, it’s the process you use to present the product or service to the world, which inevitably entails selecting a form of media best suited to your audience for the advertising campaign. It is essential that your chosen form of advertising is timely and used in a specific, strategic way. This involves creating a campaign that aligns with the needs of your audience. A great advertising campaign will utilise a mixture of media to best generate excitement for a product. If the product you are selling is geared toward a young audience, then think social media – platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are where you will reach that audience, where other consumer groups might respond better to radio, television or print ads, whichever is best for your audience should be your main focus, but many successful advertising campaigns use a mix of various media to ensure that they reach the widest audience possible.
What do Marketing and Advertising have in common?
It is important to acknowledge that advertising is a component of marketing. Marketing is the processes required to bring your service or product to the marketplace and advertising is shouting about your product or service to your target audience. Advertising uses extensive research collected by your marketing strategy to best communicate the brand.
So in a nutshell, marketing is a controlled wide-reaching process, while advertising is specifically focussed on your brand and how it communicates with your existing and potential customers or buyers.
Caffeine Marketing will help you work out a marketing plan that uses all of the ingredients of marketing, including advertising, to help reach your target audience and achieve your business goals. Contact us today for a FREE marketing review and start your journey towards fulfilling your business’s full potential!
