Brand

A brand is defined as a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors.

Building a strong brand requires careful planning and a great deal of long-tern investment. At the heart of a successful brand is a great product or service, backed by creatively designed and executed marketing.

From here on, am not going to post the very basics of marketing as they are available in abundance over the internet. Let us jump into the concepts beyond the basics and on the current happenings too.

Marketing vs. Advertising: What's the Difference?

You will often find that many people confuse marketing with advertising or vice versa. While both components are important, but they are very different. Knowing the difference and doing your market research can put your company on the path to substantial growth.

Let's start off by reviewing the formal definitions of each and then lets go into the explanation of how marketing and advertising differ from one another:

Advertising: The paid, public, non-personal announcement of a persuasive message by an identified sponsor; the non-personal presentation or promotion by a firm of its products to its existing and potential customers.

Marketing: The systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products.

After reading both the definitions it is easy to understand how the difference can be confusing to the point that people think of them as one-in-the same, so lets break it down a bit.

Advertising is a single component of the marketing process. It's the part that involves getting the word out concerning your business, product, or the services you are offering. It involves the process of developing strategies such as ad placement, frequency, etc. Advertising includes the placement of an ad in such mediums as newspapers, direct mail, billboards, television, radio, and of course the Internet. Advertising is the largest expense of most marketing plans.

The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement. Advertising only equals one piece of the pie in the strategy. All of these elements must not only work independently but they also must work together towards the bigger goal. Marketing is a process that takes time and can involve hours of research for a marketing plan to be effective. Think of marketing as everything that an organization does to facilitate an exchange between company and consumer.

What is advertising?

Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Ads can be a cost-effective way to disseminate messages, whether to build brands or to educate people about your product.

Every advertising will have a goal and it has to be a specific communication task which should be accomplished with a specific audience in a specific time.

Advertising objectives can be classified according to whether their target is to inform, persuade, remind or reinforce.

4Ps in Marketing

The 4Ps (also known as the Marketing Mix model) can be used by marketers as a tool to assist in defining the marketing strategy and these are controllable variables.

1. Product
2. Price
3. Place
4. Promotion

Apart from these 4Ps, there are other significant Ps which are

5. People
6. Process
7. Physical Evidence.

These extended Ps plays a significant role in Services Marketing. More explanation on Marketing Mix will be posted in detail here. Check them back.

Marketing Defined

Marketing deals with identifying and meeting human needs in a profitable way. As
defined by the American Marketing Association, "Marketing is an organizational
function and a set of processes for creating, communication and delivering value to
customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefits the
organization and its stake holders"

According to internationally known marketing guru Brian
Norris, “Marketing is the ongoing process of moving people
closer to making a decision to purchase, use, follow, refer,
upload, download, obey, reject, conform, become complacent
to someone else’s products, services or values. Simply, if it
doesn’t facilitate a ‘sale’ then it’s not marketing.”

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