Marketing and advertising have long been synonymous with each other. After all, aren’t they the same thing? Well, here’s the thing, they are actually two completely different topics. To understand the difference between the two topics, one must recognize the motivations behind the two schools. Advertising can loosely be defined as placing your product or service in front of an audience so that they can become familiar with it. Marketing is a strategic approach to determine what products or services the public may or may not be interested in owning or using. 

Advertising is a 400 year old practice. With the advent of exploration and the new world, people began using advertising to promote their products and far away lands. After all, why else would someone move thousands of miles from home unless they had a good motivating reason. 

Modern marketing, on the other hand, is only 150 years old or so. With its roots in the industrial revolution, marketing as we know it today began to blossom. Mass production began to increase the quantity of available products and marketing was necessary to convince Americans that they needed to purchase all of these new products. 

As the two industries evolved, they met each other and formed a union that is commonplace today. In fact, one could argue that marketing would not exist without advertising and vice versa, in today’s marketplace. 

Read further and you can see what the two concepts become so intertwined with each other. You will see why marketing and advertising strategies are connected to each other and have become interdependent. As technology continues to evolve and digital marketing and advertising become the norm, both industries will become ever more reliant on the success of the other. 

The value of marketing vs the value of advertising are both incredibly important to anyone looking to sell a product or service. Determining how to intertwine the two concepts will ultimately determine the success of new and existing entrepreneurs. 

The American Advertising Association have put together a great article, Marketing vs. Advertising which goes into a lot more depth on the differences.