Advertising VS. Marketing: What's The Difference?
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She would bring a fresh baked batch. And I remember at the time I was scoffing at it as a 20 something year old. I was like, what the heck? This isn't like, what does that do for your business? Besides like dropping off cookies? Give me a break. Can I say real quick as a 26 year old now, I'm thinking marketing genius. Yes.

Hey everyone, welcome to the SOB Marketing Podcast where we celebrate the SOB that you are and if you haven't figured it out yet we mean small owned business we don't mean SOB. Listen we know that as a small business owner you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it and while some days it may feel like the business is owning you

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Hey everybody and welcome back to the SOB Marketing Podcast. SOB as in small owned business. I promise we are not calling you guys names. Before we get started, just a little bit of housekeeping. Thank you so much for joining us today.

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And really quick, if you do not have time to listen to this entire episode, I mean, we would prefer if you did, but we get it. You are busy. So we have a TLDL, Too Long, Didn't Listen, chapter. Go ahead and click on that and you will get sent to the synopsis or the summary of this episode. But again, it would be really cool if you listened to the entire thing.

Vivian, what are we talking about today? Yeah, if you guys go skip to that TLDL, come back and listen to the full length episode at a later point in time because, you know, we're trying to share some valuable insights with you guys when it comes to marketing. And today we are actually covering a very big misconception. I am so excited about this, Chelsea, because I cannot tell you how many times

People use the words marketing and advertising interchangeably because they think it is the same. And we are here to clear the air and to set things straight today to tell you guys marketing and advertising are not the same thing. Okay. Yeah, they are completely different things. And we're going to explain a little bit about that today. So Chelsea, where do you want to start the conversation?

Well, you know what? I want to start this conversation by saying this misconception, you know, we also brought it upon ourselves. I think marketers have a really bad habit of saying marketing and advertising and using it interchangeably. It's not the same thing. And we're going to try to keep the analogies to a minimum.

Try is the key word here. Try is the key word. But a really great analogy that I want to start off with is, y'all, a square is a rectangle, correct? But a rectangle is not a square because a square has to have equal sides, but a rectangle doesn't have equal sides. So just like the square and the rectangle, advertising is marketing. Right?

But marketing is not advertising. Yes, I love that you brought this up. And if any of you out there are like me and you love a good definition, okay, what does the Encyclopedia Britannica tell me? Because I'm old school and I remember a time when you had to actually open these books and flip through the pages and find the definition. I don't think Chelsea remembers those days, do you?

No, I just Google the word. Yeah. See, they actually- Urban dictionary. Urban dictionary. They make us do a hard word back in the day. So according to the American Marketing Association, okay, and this is the end all be all, like these, we trust these people, the American Marketing Association, because this is what they do, right? So-

When they're explaining the terms marketing and advertising, this is how they put it. Quote, marketing is a business practice that involves identifying, predicting, and meeting customer needs. Okay, let that soak in.

Advertising is a business practice where a company pays to place its messaging or branding in a particular location. All right, so this is the analogy I'm going to use throughout this episode. And y'all, please bear with me.

If any of you have ever been in a relationship or you've dated someone, and if currently you aren't dating someone, you can email us, you know, and Chelsea and I can become little matchmakers for you guys. I didn't consent to that. Don't email me. You can email Vivian. So...

If you've ever dated somebody, you know that first and foremost, you go on a date first, right? So you have your first date. Now, the way we equate this is advertising is going to be equal to asking somebody on a date because essentially that is kind of what you're doing for your business. You're out there looking for people to your... I don't want to use the word luring because that kind of feels a little...

I don't know, a little weird. But with advertising, that's what you're doing. You are paying to put feelers out there to get people interested into your product or service or your business overall.

advertising is the first step in that relationship. Just like dating, going on that first date is the first step in a relationship. But if you want a long-term relationship, if you want it to go from dating to actually being boyfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend, whatever you guys do, okay, whatever you're into, then advertising

It requires massaging of that relationship. And what I mean by that is then it's going to include how are you guys communicating, right?

How are you ensuring that that person is getting their needs fulfilled? You're doing in marketing, you are essentially doing the same thing. You are going to your customers. You're checking in. It's in the way that you communicate with them. It's in the way that you put surveys out to gather feedback to ensure that you are delivering on what you promised. So marketing is going to be the overall relationship.

relationship. So just think of it that way. Advertising is like you're asking people on a first date, hey, give my business a try. See if you like it. Marketing is the overall stuff you are doing to keep them in the relationship and to keep them there with you. Vivian, can I say I...

I don't want to say that I doubted you, but I was really nervous about this analogy because I was like, I don't think I fully understand. Perfect. You explained that. You described that perfectly. That makes perfect sense. I'm going to try to sum it up in one little sentence. Advertising is just one small piece of what marketing can be, but creating ads is not doing marketing.

Yes, absolutely. And I mean, I think the overall thing and reminder here is that the reason this discussion is so important is because if you are saying, if when you're having a conversation with somebody and you're talking about your business growth, your business overall, and you're saying,

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, you know, my marketing is good. I'm doing good on my marketing. And they're like, oh, well, what, what are you doing for your marketing? And you're like, basically, I have ads everywhere. That's not, that is just your advertising. But yeah.

You need to be paying more attention to stuff like what does your brand voice say about you, right? How are you approaching people? How often are you checking in? Do you have an email that you are sending once a month, once a week to nurture that relationship? How many different avenues are you giving people to give you feedback? Do you send surveys out once a

you know, a month? Are you asking people for Google reviews? Because those Google reviews could be extremely valuable and they could give you insight into how your restaurant staff is treating people or new services that you need to add on. That is all part of that marketing function. And so I just want to be sure that when you guys are having these conversations that you're not confusing one person

portion of it. I want to be sure you're not saying you're in a relationship with people when you actually just went on one date. Okay. That's what I want. I love it. Can we also talk about how

Your goals when it comes to marketing and your goals when it comes to advertising are very different. They're very different because advertising is about optimizing that initiative, getting maybe as many clicks as possible, as many eyeballs on it, that sort of thing. Your marketing goals are going to be broader. They're going to be, I want to increase my new patient count.

Look at me going back to healthcare. We just can't reach out to healthcare. We can't get out of healthcare. Oh my God. But my example is a marketing goal is going to be, I want to increase new patient visits by 30%. An advertising initiative in your advertising goal is going to be,

I'm going to get this many clicks so that I can convert these people. Your goals are going to be very different. Also think about what goes into creating your marketing goals and your marketing plans. It's going to be your SWOT analysis. It's going to be analyzing your target audience as well as understanding your

what your abilities are when it comes to marketing. Advertising, put simply, is a marketing tool and initiative. It's a way to reach your marketing goals. And I think what it also does is when you correctly know how to identify an advertising function versus a marketing function, it...

It allows you to kind of do the touchy-feely stuff, okay? And Chelsea, you and I both know this because we do come from healthcare marketing where we give credence to some of that touchy-feely stuff that sometimes you can't attach hard numbers to. What I mean by that is this, and I'll use a perfect example. When I was a young buck...

And I was working at the Chamber of Commerce locally. We had a local state farm agent who's very well known around here and does, I mean, this man makes a ton of money. Okay. He's, he does very well for himself because he's a very smart businessman. And I remember,

He would hire these like reps or marketing coordinators. And at the time he had one who would come into the chamber and about, I want to say maybe like once every two weeks she would bring,

homemade cookies, not homemade, but they had bought like a little oven in their office. And literally they were the, I think Otis Meyer cookies, like, you know, the good ones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So she would bring a fresh baked batch. And I remember at the time I was scoffing at it as a 20 something year old. I was like, what the heck? This isn't like, what does that do for your business besides like

dropping off cookies. Give me a break. Okay. Can I say real quick, as a 26-year-old now, I'm thinking marketing genius. I'm thinking she is in a whole other level because we tend to

We tend to forget that people are emotional. People want that connection. Just saying, as a 26-year-old now, love it. If you guys ever want to sway Chelsea in any way, give her cookies, apparently. Absolutely. But you're right. And here's the logic behind it is this. So here's the thing. From a marketing, from a advertising perspective, is it hard to...

Would you consider that an advertising function and would you be able to correlate data and numbers to it? It'd be a little hard. As a marketing function, what that does is let's say one of your marketing initiatives is to grow your customer base within this specific county, right, by X amount.

This could be a function of that marketing initiative because what she's doing is, for one, she's making consistent, because we saw her on a consistent basis, she's making consistent visits into these businesses. She's bringing them something they look forward to, they enjoy, and she's dropping off some type of material every time she's doing that. So there's always some type of promo or marketing material that promotes his name.

as a State Farm agent when she's doing that. And the genius part of it, which is not about the cookies and not about anything else, is it is giving her a touch point and an opportunity for open conversation to get to know these people and to get to know the gatekeepers. Okay, y'all, back in the day, I hate to say it, but they had it figured out. Whenever they would obviously swoon

the front desk people, the secretaries to the people that had the big positions because they knew at the end of the day, they're the ones kind of controlling the calendar and they're the ones that are closest to that person in that position. And therefore, if I can, you know, get myself in her, his good graces, then they will mention to their superior, to their boss, like, hey, you should really, you know,

give this person, like you have someone on your team that's helping you make that pitch, right? So,

I think it was genius on her part. In my 20s, I didn't see that because I was, you know, I was 20. I knew everything, like whatever. That wasn't marketing. That wasn't... But it really was a great way for him to expand his brand recognition within those small businesses, the businesses that ultimately would need insurance at some point, right? So, and...

Interestingly enough, still to this day, I mean, that was how many years ago? Because I'm now in my 40s. He still does it. So obviously, and this man is a very smart businessman. So I promise you, he's not going to keep doing something for 20 years if it is not working in his favor. And now he actually has, I want to say he's got like four or five locations. He's expanded into other areas. So very smart. But I think that's where when you put these things in perspective,

If you were looking at that as just an ad, right, a function of an advertising opportunity, he would have probably pulled the plug way too soon because that takes time to build that relationship. Are you a small business owner feeling overwhelmed by marketing? We understand. That's why we created the SOB community just for you.

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Vivian, I loved that example. I have an example that's kind of the exact same thing, but it's healthcare marketing. And I worked for the allergy place, the allergy office. We don't give names around here.

One of our goals. I feel like it needs to be, what is it they say in Harry Potter? He who shall not be named. Is that what it is? You can tell Vivian and I were really into Harry Potter. Not. The Sholomant is like Harry Potter, but cooler.

Check that out, Siri. Check out that series. I was going to say, I'm more into like Con Air and what's the Dante's Peak? You remember Dante's Peak? No. I love anything that's like the world exploding. Yeah.

Okay, this is like fantasy magic, but like cooler than Harry Potter. Look, anyways, so example, allergy office. One of our marketing goals was to bring in more referrals from other physicians.

So what I would do as the marketing director is I would actually coordinate lunches with these providers. So I would bring a provider with me. I would bring a nurse practitioner or an actual doctor and we would go and sit down. We would go to the office and sit down and have lunch with them. And we would provide lunch for everyone in the office. And that did more work.

bringing in new patients than any advertising could do because you're creating that relationship. You're building a bond. And also, if there is a problem, you can hash it out right there. You know, like I had a provider once say to me, well, you know what? I would feel more comfortable if I knew for a fact anyone I referred to you guys had to see this specific relationship.

And I said, easy. I can just write that down. Anyone who's referred from this office has to be put with this doctor. That's simple. I can do that. But he had never gotten the chance to talk with someone to say that. So he just didn't send any of his patients to that office.

Until I can make sure that that happened for him. Yeah. And I think that's where the feedback part of it comes in. You know, when we, when I was using that comparison of like keeping a long-term relationship and then, or just dating, which advertising is just the dating part of it, the marketing part of it, that overall relationship is,

of doing things like this, like in healthcare, in healthcare specifically, that was your avenue to going and figuring out, well, what is the roadblock? Why is this particular practice or this doctor not referring patients to us? Because literally he sent us zero in the last like four, you know, months, like what's up with that? Um,

And so that gives gives you that avenue for that feedback to then be like, oh, it's just because either there's a misconception of something we're doing or they have a preference in the way one doctor practices versus the other, whatever it is. But the same can be done across the board for all industries. And I know, you know, for let's say your doctor.

I don't know if you're more of like a content creator and you're thinking like, well, how would this translate into what I'm doing? The engagement part of it, right? So like, hey, whether it's, I'm going to send a survey out via email every once in a while. We do this here at the Season Marketer. So at the end of every year, and I try to do it also in June, we send an email that's a very brief, like three minute survey. And it basically asks,

people, hey, where are you in your small business marketing? Like, what would you like for us to cover more of? And some of those are actually very surprising to me because what I would think is the hold up. Like, let's say everyone talks about social media marketing now, right? So a lot of creators are thinking,

businesses have a problem with keeping up with social media trends. That's not really their big thing. Like I think this last time we sent that survey out, they were identifying things like, I don't know, like how much of a marketing budget

to invest in throughout the year, right? Or I don't have a marketing budget and I need to figure out other ways to be able to promote my business on a tight budget. And so these are important conversations and things to know if that's your target audience. If our target audience is small business owners, which it is, I need to hear from small business owners. I can't be making assumptions. Absolutely. Okay.

I also want to say, why does this matter? Right? Why are we even talking about this? Like, okay, it's really cool that you want to make sure that we understand that a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is in a square.

It can be such a big disservice to you and to your small business if you're only focusing on advertising when it comes to marketing your small business. I mean, we just explained why networking is such a strong tool when it comes to marketing. Let's think of community events, right?

Being a part of your community and actually engaging with other people like that's not advertising. That is still a part of marketing. And that is a strong, strong initiative when it comes to marketing. Let's think about ribbon cuttings.

Ribbit cuttings aren't advertising. You're not spending money to put your business in front of other people, but it's still such a powerful tool when it comes to getting your small business in front of other people. Yeah. And just to go back to the definition, because I'm a girl that constantly has to look at this stuff. If we're thinking about advertising versus marketing, advertising is going to be specific.

Facebook ads, Google banners, billboards, radio spots. There's an exchange of money there where you're exchanging money to tap into an audience. The marketing is the bigger picture stuff. It's everything that you do to attract and to retain the customers. So

Your branding, your social media presence, customer service, how your business looks, the PR part of your business, right? What people associate your business with. You cannot minimize those things. And I think that's the part where if you're using those terms interchangeably, then you're shortchanging yourself.

in one of those areas, right? It means you're probably thinking of either marketing, but you're saying advertising or you're thinking advertising and saying marketing. And either way, it means that you're missing the mark in one area. Well, yeah, I think this was a short and sweet episode. So let's do really quick the TLDL, Too Long, Didn't Listen. Again, if you skipped all the way over here,

I understand you guys are busy, but when you have the time, go listen to the entire conversation, okay? But TLDL, basically, advertising and marketing are not the same thing. Advertising is a form of marketing. It's a marketing initiative, but marketing is going to be the big picture. It's your small business sitting down and finding who your target audience is, how you're going to connect with them online.

all of those concepts advertising is going to be exchanging money to get in front of a target audience it's going to be an ad correct why is this important because you need both

to be successful when it comes to your small business. So remember, create clear goals so that you can figure out the best way to reach your target audience and to figure out if it's going to be a different type of marketing initiative or maybe it will be advertising. So thank you guys for listening and go out there and be the best SOB you can be.