The following article is part of a new series presented by Jewish Content Network which will discuss business ideas, marketing advice, and feature new business technologies, in an effort to help small business and organizations thrive and succeed. 

Advertising VS Marketing:

This is one of the most misunderstood concepts to entrepreneurs, business owners, and unfortunately marketing agencies.

The first thing to understand is advertising is just one component, of marketing.  According to Kathleen Micken, professor at Roger Williams University,

“Marketing can be defined as everything an organization does to facilitate an exchange between itself and it’s ‘clients. Advertising is just one of many marketing activities.”

A simple concept by definition, marketing is every way you touch a prospect or customer. That includes everything from how your receptionist answers the phone, to how an order is fulfilled, to the positive or negative buzz about your product.

Advertising, according to Barron’s Dictionary of Marketing Terms, is
“A non personal message communicated through public media or medium”

Lets use an example of “Moishy the book binder” to further understand the difference between marketing and advertising. .

Meet Moishy the Book Binder:

Moishy is super excited that he has just learned how to bind books and wants to offer his service to willing participants.

Moishy spends time designing a flyer and asks multiple people their thoughts about the ad copy.
This is marketing.

He asks his friend to help him edit the text for the poster and writes out some goals and metrics to measure if the poster is successful or not.
This is marketing.

He sets up a new phone number to take calls, subsequently records a new voicemail for missed calls. He also logs into his online phone account and counts how many calls he gets each and every day.
This is still marketing.

Moishy now takes that flyer he first made and posts it on the shul message board.
This is advertising.

Why You Need to Focus on Marketing First: 

As you can see advertising is really just a small subset of a larger category called marketing.

Often is the case is that an advertiser scratches his head and asks himself “I have been speeding money on advertising yet I’m not seeing any results?”

This advertiser needs to ask himself “Have I invested adequately in marketing or have I just spent time and money on advertising?”

“Have I invested adequately in marketing or have I just spent time and money on advertising?”

When clients skip analyzing their current business stack or fail to take the necessary steps to plan a comprehensive marketing plan, It is as if he is skipping the meat and potatoes and diving into the desert.

An effective marketing plan takes a concerted effort and needs proper planning. Without acknowledging the importance of a solid marketing plan, we can recall Alan Laiken’s famous quote “Failing to plan is planning to fail”

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Chaim Chernoff is the Chief Marketing Officer at the Jewish Content Network. Always on the lookout for latest digital marketing trends, Chaim aims to help businesses expand their presence and grow their business in the digital world. 

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