Although the distinctions between Marketing and Sales have been clearly established for a number of years, those between Marketing and Advertising continue to cause confusion in many circles. While I’m certainly not the ultimate authority on those distinctions, I’d like to offer a few suggestions that may explain what’s what… along with the reasons why. The first suggestion, for obvious reasons, is this: Marketing, however you ultimately define it, should be a profit center, not a cost center.

If you’ve looked up the words Marketing and Advertising in various dictionaries, where you’d expect to find the authoritative meaning of those words, here’s a sample of what you’ll discover for Marketing: “…the total activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or purchaser, including advertising, storage, shipping, and sale.”

A typical definition of advertising often refers to it as “…the act or practice of drawing public attention to a product or service, especially through paid advertisements in newspapers and magazines, on radio or television, etc. .”

Aside from telling you that marketing is a much more complicated process of which advertising is merely a part, dictionaries don’t seem to do much to answer our question, “Which is what and why?” Is there another acceptable authority we can turn to? What about Wikipedia? It has the reputation of being the keeper of humanity’s collected knowledge, right?

When it comes to marketing, this is the gist of what Wikipedia says: “Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers. Marketing can sometimes be interpreted as the art of selling products, but sales are only one.” part of the marketing (process).

As for advertising, here’s a shortened version of the Wikipedia definition: “…a form of marketing communication…used to encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience (viewers, readers, or listeners…) to continue or take some new action. More commonly, the desired outcome is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering.”

As you can see, Wikipedia adds some interesting dimensions to both Marketing and Advertising activities, as well as relating Advertising to Sales.

What seems clear from the dictionary definitions of advertising is that advertising is the process or practice of drawing attention to a product or service through paid advertisements using various media. There’s nothing new there, right? That has been the function of advertising for decades.

However, when it comes to defining marketing, most sources seem to be united on two points: First, they reinforce the fact that sales, along with sales, though not marketing as such, are common functions of marketing. , and second, that advertising, the attention call. to a product or service – is a function of marketing as an essential preliminary to the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer.

The bottom line, it seems, is that while advertising is not marketing, advertising is a function of marketing in the same way that sales, along with sales, are functions of marketing. Gone are the days when marketing’s involvement in bringing a product or service to the buying public was limited to the marketing mix of the 4 P’s defined by EJ McCarthy in 1960: product (or service), place, price, and promotion. Today’s marketing involves those 4Ps and much more.

It’s worth noting that in many companies today, particularly larger ones, the actual Sales and Sales functions are managed by a separate Sales organization rather than something directly related to Marketing. The rationale for such a setup is that Selling is a specialized function that is best managed by people with specialized knowledge, skills, and experience. The contribution of Marketing to Sales in such an organization is normally limited to suggesting and providing promotional materials for use by the Sales team.