The Difference Between Marketing and Advertising: Which Is Right for Your Small Business?

The Difference Between Marketing and Advertising: Which Is Right for Your Small Business?

As small business owners, we all have limited resources. The secret to success is knowing how to make the most of those resources. Marketing and advertising are two areas where it’s easy to waste either your time, your money, or both if you’re not strategic. Rather than telling you where you should be investing your resources (the answer is different for everyone), I’m going to start by laying out the differences between marketing and advertising so you can get an idea of which investment makes the most sense for your business.

What is Marketing?

There is a lot of crossover between marketing and advertising, which leads to much of the confusion. In fact, advertising is really a subset of marketing, but what makes an activity a marketing activity without being an advertising activity mostly has to do with the goal of that activity. ​

​In most cases, the goal of marketing is brand recognition. You need to get your name out there, differentiate yourself from the competition, and get your prospects to know, like, and trust you before they’ll buy from you. While advertising can do some of that work, marketing does the lion’s share of it. Marketing does this by providing value to the audience, and that’s probably the biggest difference between marketing and advertising. Advertising is offering a solution to a problem, whereas marketing is showing people how they can solve a problem for themselves (using your knowledge and expertise).

​What Is Advertising?

As mentioned above, advertising can do some of the work of getting your name out there and building brand recognition. Consider social media advertising: you can pay for a post to get shown to more people than just your followers, and depending on your goals, you can use that post to make people familiar with your brand who otherwise would not have heard of you, or you can use it to promote a particular product/service you provide, or an event you’re hosting. Both goals are good goals to have when it comes to growing your business, but you need to determine which one makes the most sense when it comes to investing advertising dollars. The answer will depend on a variety of factors, including your budget, who your target audience is, and where they are in the buyer journey when they encounter your ad.

Advertising as Marketing

As mentioned above, advertising is a subset of marketing and you can think of marketing as the hook, while advertising is the line that reels them in. If your marketing is effective, it should convince prospects you know what you’re doing, so when they are ready to buy, they’ll already be familiar with you and they’ll know they can trust you to do the job right. Then all they need is the right ad to convince them to take that final step to becoming a customer.

​If you’re not sure whether marketing or advertising is right for your business (or when to use one over the other), you might need some help getting your business strategy together. A great place to start is my book, Be Strategic, Be Intentional, Be Successful, which goes over everything a successful business owner needs, from foundation, to marketing and advertising.