What Is The Difference Between Marketing And Advertising? (4 Examples)

For many people, marketing is synonymous with advertising. Even some marketers use both words interchangeably. But the truth is advertising is only a small part of marketing.

Want to make sense of it all and learn from various examples along the way? You’re in the right place. In this article, you’ll go through the following:

What marketing is
What advertising is
Difference between marketing and advertising
Two examples of marketing
Two examples of advertising

Let’s dive into it.

What is marketing?

According to the American Marketing Association, “marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

I kicked this off with an academic definition for a good reason. (We’re getting back to human speech now—don’t worry.)

Did you notice any mention of promotion or advertising in the definition above? Me neither. From the definition, we can deduce that advertising takes place. But the point is that marketing is so much more than that.

So let me put together a more digestible definition of marketing:

.Marketing is a process that starts with market research needed to develop a marketing strategy, which guides all communication including promotions and advertising.

What is advertising?

Advertising is paying for exposure to your brand. It’s a form of paid promotion. Advertising enables organizations to communicate a message to a target audience at a certain time.

Unlike marketing, advertising isn’t such a vague term for many. We can clearly say, “This is advertising!” when pointing to the following image:

What is the difference between marketing and advertising?

Advertising is a product of marketing. It’s what the outer world often sees. That’s why many people use the terms interchangeably. But there’s so much more to marketing than just advertising.

In other words, all advertising is marketing, but only a small portion of marketing activities is advertising. It’s best to wrap this up with an image:

Two examples of marketing

.We need to kick this off with some terminology. If you ask a random person to tell you an example of marketing, they’ll most likely mention a type of marketing, a marketing channel, or a specific marketing campaign. So what do all these mean?

1. Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is when you pull your audience in with relevant and useful content. It’s best explained in the following image that compares inbound marketing to outbound marketing.

Its biggest strength is contextuality. Take this very article, for example.

If you Googled the difference between marketing and advertising, clicked on this article, and are reading the article now, then this set of actions is an example of inbound marketing. (It solves your problem at the right time.)

Recommended reading: What Is Inbound Marketing? A Beginner’s Guide

2. Content marketing

Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing content to attract and retain customers. The content can be in the form of blog posts, podcasts, videos, infographics, ebooks, etc.

Yes, inbound marketing can be understood as a part of content marketing (if you’re wondering about that now). This is the main reason why content marketing is our most important marketing channel. It’s simple and effective.

Two examples of advertising

Similar to the logic applied before, all examples here are technically advertising channels. There are a lot of them. So we’ll go across the spectrum, covering examples of both new and traditional advertising.

1. Pay-per-click advertising

One of the two most prominent examples of online advertising here. In pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, advertisers pay a fee each time someone clicks on an ad.

2. Display advertising

Now, let’s look at the other most common online advertising channel. Display ads appear on websites that provide their space to advertising networks, and the ads look like this: