Marketing and advertising serve different purposes. Marketing’s focus is on growing businesses. Advertising focus on transactions. Those are two dissimilar activities. Let me illustrate.
I want to begin this Growing Idea with an advertising example. There are few forms of advertising more common than automobile advertising. Please take a few minutes now and view two or three of these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN1kvQF6tAg (automobile commercials).
I don’t know what you thought about those commercials, but I want to talk about them for a few minutes. If you aren’t in the market for a new Lexus how effective was that commercial for you? If you aren’t in the market for a new car how did any of those commercials affect you? You couldn’t have cared less, could you? And that is the fundamental problem with advertising.
In order for advertising to be effective two things need to occur:
- The product or service itself has to be something you can see yourself buying.
- You also have to be in the market or close to being in the market for advertising to work at all.
There are few things more boring than automobile commercials if you don’t like that brand of automobile or you aren’t in the market to buy an one.
Those are the two major obstacles to effective advertising. Advertising new equipment only works if your prospects and customers are in the market to buy new equipment right now, and that they actually see or pay attention to your advertisement.
Marketing is more difficult to describe than advertising. Marketing is not another word for selling or advertising. While advertising is tactical and short term, marketing is strategic and it’s long term. Marketing’s goal isn’t necessarily a sale today, this week, this month or even next year. Marketing is ongoing. It is a series of interconnected strategic steps designed to grow an entire business over the long term. Marketing in its truest form allows your customers and prospects to come to know, like, and trust you–and become such raving fans that they refer you to their friends.
Advertising is transactional, and marketing is relational. For today’s distributorships to be more successful at revenue growth, you will need to better align your marketing activities with buyer expectations and critical business objectives.
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