As I talk with people about using Teleseminars (aka TeleWebcasts) in their marketing, the question that comes up many times is, “What’s the difference between marketing and advertising?” Although both are important they are quite different in fact. Understanding the differences between the two can set your company on the fast track to success.

Let’s look at the definitions of each and explain how marketing and advertising are different from one other. Here are a couple of definitions I found that I think are fairly accurate.

Advertising: The paid, public, non-personal announcement of a persuasive message by an identified sponsor; the non-personal presentation or promotion by a firm of its products to its existing and potential customers.

Marketing: The systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products.

Can you see why it is easy to be confused and why most people think of them as meaning the same thing? Let’s try to straighten out the confusion.

Advertising is just one component of the marketing process. It covers publicity for your business, product or services. It involves the process of creating strategies for ad placement, size, frequency, etc. Then advertising includes the actual placement of an ad in various mediums such as newspapers, yellow pages, magazines, TV, radio and the Internet (Google Adwords, banner ads, etc.) Advertising can be by far the single largest expense in a marketing campaign.

I think the easiest way to distinguish advertising from marketing is mentally visualize breaking a pie into several slices with each slice representing advertising, pricing, distribution, customer service and the like. You can see that advertising is only one slice of the pie within in the marketing strategy. All of these components must not only work on their own but they also must work together as a marketing strategy towards the goal of promoting your business and obtaining paying clients.

So in conclusion, marketing is the process that an organization goes through to facilitate an exchange between buyer and seller supported by many parts, one of which is advertising.