Monday, June 25, 2007

Advertising & Marketing-Is There Any Difference?

Countless people muddle advertising with marketing and the other way around. Actually, both the strategies are uniformly important but have differences too. To put a firm on the fast track of success, one must be well-familiar with the differences between advertising and marketing.

The term advertising is a mode to describe or present a product or a service in front of general public, to induce them to buy, acquire or support that product. Basically, advertising involves three basic elements: a target audience, a message, and a medium through which to send that message.

On the other hand, marketing is the strategy to make a product or service available at the marketplace. In other words, it is a movement to bring buyers and sellers together for the jointly profitable exchange or transmit of products. It is an attempt that an organization carries out to accomplish their goals. Those objectives could be selling of products, branding and attracting shareholders to towards the company.

The above two paragraphs make it easy to understand how the differences can be mystifying that some people consider both of them as same. In fact, advertising is a part of marketing process or is only a single component of the marketing process.

Advertising facilitates the manufacturers in exposing their product or services to the general public and marketplaces. Advertising includes the process of making strategies like, ad placement in newspapers, yellow pages, television, radio, billboards, and of course the internet, etc. Advertising is the largest expense of most marketing plans, with public relations following in a close second and market research not falling far behind.

One of the most effective way of distinguishing advertising with marketing is to imagine marketing as a pie which consist of numerous slices like, advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy and community involvement. And advertising is only one piece of that pie. Without any of these slices marketing strategy can work but not effectively. To achieve bigger goals, all the steps must be used in point of fact of publicizing your business and obtaining customers.

So, it is quite clear that knowing the differences between advertising and marketing and conducting marketing research can clear the difference between an effective advertising campaign and a campaign that causes a loss. To achieve best results, the manufacturers must gain knowledge of the differences between advertising and marketing.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maaz_Iqbal

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Origination of Advertising

Advertising traces its roots back to the Christian era. The very first medium of advertising was outdoor signs, painted on the walls and was considered to be very attention-grabbing. In the middle of 1400, movable-form of advertising was invented and in the 16th century some organizations had a trade mark which was a two or three dimensional picture or sign.

Advertising is a medium through which companies boost up their sales and profits. It is also 'mass communication', and the advertiser pays for it in order to convince a certain segment of the public to adopt ideas or take actions of benefit to the advertiser. Early in medieval times a simple but effective form of advertising was when popular merchants employed 'town criers' who shouted out praise about the company/advertisers.

In the 1920s, advertisers and their agents had come to realize the possibilities of advertising on the radio. With its immediacy, radio could convey their message directly to the prospective consumer who would not need to purchase a publication or even need to be literate. In the 1950s television became the most influenced media. Now advertisers could demonstrate the use of their products and present well known figures to praise it.

In recent times, advertisers spend huge amounts on ad campaigns, although they don’t even know how valuable their money would be. Frank W. Woolworth once said, ''I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted. The problem is that I don't know which half''.

Different advertisers bring into play numerous strategies while designing an advertisement to grab the attention of as much consumers as they can. In order to be effective, advertisements must have, 'stopping power', make an impression, be easily understood, and have 'locking power' to make a big impact on the reader to want to make them read the more detailed information included in the advertisement.

Three most common reasons for the dislike of an advertisement by the public are,

  • The irritation factor of it being everywhere
  • The product being advertised
  • The message it gives out

Four main things that interest advertisment readers' are,

  • Story telling
  • Suspense
  • Drama
  • It being narrative

The notion of target marketing and partitioning is about the positioning of the advertisement very carefully to where it is most effectual and being vigilant not to place it where it may do harm, e.g. not for children's viewing. Partitioning variables can be demographic, geographic, psychographic or geo-demographic.

It is quite clear that advertising is a high-priced business which has been around long before people can imagine which will go on to be successful until people know what they want and what they are being made to buy.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maaz_Iqbal