Marketing and Advertising. What's the difference?

by Patrick De Thierry

Here's a question that anyone in home business should be able to answer. Are you actively marketing your business, or simply advertising it?

Believe it or not, a lot of people use the words "marketing" and "advertising" interchangeably.

Sadly, most people who consider themselves "network marketers" or "online marketers", should actually be calling themselves "network advertisers" or "online advertisers".

There's actually a huge difference in the two.

Advertising is only one small piece of the marketing puzzle.

We were recently reading an article by Jay Conrad Levinson (of "Guerilla Marketing" fame), one of the top marketing experts in the world, and he hit the nail on the head with the first line of his article.

"A WebSite is an island."

Think about that for just a minute.

The referral WebSites we give you ARE islands, and until you start providing the roads and bridges for people to travel to them, they are going to remain empty islands.

The "roads and bridges" are of course: ADVERTISING.

Advertising is a necessity to bring people to your island, but it SHOULD NOT be your entire marketing plan. Decades ago, money spent on advertising was close to 75% of the marketing budget for most companies. Since the Internet took the world by storm, and the importance of customer relations and back-end promotions were realized, that 75% has shrunken to a mere 25%. Why? Because it's more profitable to have an overall marketing mix, rather than just advertising.

The term "marketing" is much broader than "advertising". It's much like a square and a rectangle. All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. All advertising is marketing, but not all marketing is advertising. If companies, on average, are only spending 25% of their marketing budgets on advertising these days, what else is "marketing"? Well, for today's "average" company, 50% of their budget goes into trade promotions, and an additional 25% or so goes into consumer promotions.

We'll continue with the metaphors to make our points on the difference in advertising and marketing, and why if you're serious about growing your business, you should be doing both.

Speaking of islands, we recently noticed that the State of Hawaii has been advertising THEIR ISLANDS on TV, with the intention of marketing their tourism industry. It's not a long ad spot, perhaps 30 seconds in all, but it's effective advertising. In no way does this ad attempt to completely sell you on visiting Hawaii.

It doesn't tell you how to order your Hawaiian vacation, nor is there a phone number to speak to a sales representative selling Hawaii. Instead, this Hawaii ad serves a LOT more simple purpose - to invite you, the potential Hawaii tourist, to visit an informational WebSite to view beautiful pictures of the islands, and to learn about the other amazing benefits of visiting Hawaii.

From the WebSite, you can send interactive postcards, download the Hawaii Visitor's Guide and find any other ammunition you'll need to convince your significant other that you need to visit Hawaii, and soon.

They also give you ample opportunity to provide your contact information. Now that's what we call marketing! Advertising no longer has to make the sale.

Global Domains International has designed our free trial program and our back-end email promotions to market our products to the leads we generate through advertising, but you shouldn't stop there if you want to maximize your income as an affiliate of any business.

You should also be doing your own marketing to convert as many leads as you can to new customers and/or affiliates.

All your advertising has to do is explain a few of the major benefits of working with your business or using the product, and invite people to learn more on your WebSite.

Once someone has visited your site and viewed your product/services, in a way they are raising their hand and letting you know that they are open to further marketing. After all, they had enough interest to take the simple action of visiting your WebSite.

If you remember this, you'll be a more effective promoter: Advertising generates leads. Marketing to those leads generates sales. It's simple, right?

We challenge you to become an expert marketer in your own right