What is the difference between advertising and promotion?
The company need to set up strategies on how to attract customers to buy their products and marketing is one of the methods.
Promotion and advertising are a marketing mix that tends to confuse many people. These marketing tricks have some slight similarities and wide differences.
The article provides a detailed insight into the difference between advertising and promotion with examples. Let’s find out:
What Is Advertising?
Advertising is known to be an impersonal promotion that is typically used to draw the attention of customers towards products or service through a selected paid media.
Also, advertising is a form of communication that is used to convey a single message to a large population within a short time.
The main aim of advertising is to persuade, inform, and create awareness of a product or service to a customer.
The core sources of advertising are television, radio, newspaper, magazines, billboards, pamphlets, posters, cabs, buses, and walls, etc.
The effect of advertising is quite positive and this is the reason why making an advertisement for a single product tend to be too high.
What Is Promotion?
Promotion is a set of activities with the main aim of persuading the customer to buy a product, service or brand through highlighting the advantages.
It is one of the core elements of the marketing mix and it is suitable for creating awareness, attracting and inducing customers to initiate a purchase.
Discount coupons, value-added services, trial offer, free distribution of samples, offers on festive seasons, and rebate are among ways how promotion is done.
Promotions help the company to increase sales since the goods or services are offered at a low price. Direct marketing, advertising, personal selling and public relations are activities involved in promotions.
Comparison Chart: Advertising Vs Promotion
| Basic Terms | Advertising | Promotions |
| Meaning | It is a method of driving customers’ attention towards products or services through paid media. | It is a set of activities that inform, persuade and create awareness about a product, service or brand |
| What is it | Subset | Superset |
| Core Objective | Building a brand image and boosting sales | A short term technique of pushing sales |
| Strategy | Promotional | Marketing |
| Impact | Long term effect | Short term effect |
| Result | Gradual and slow but can be seen after sometime | Tend to be fast but short-lived |
| Cost | Too expensive | Cost-effective |
| Suitable for | Medium to large enterprise | All enterprise regardless of the size |
| Communication | One way Process | Two-way process |
| Approach | Unique to product | Not necessarily unique to the product |
Core Differences Between advertising and promotion
- Advertising has a unique approach to products or services while promotions have no unique approach to products or services.
- The result of advertising tend to be slow whereas that of promotion is quite fast
- Advertising has a long term effect while promotions have short term effect
- The core purpose of advertising is to build brand and continuity while the promotion is to increase sales and attract customers
- Advertising is suitable for medium to the large enterprise while the promotion is suitable for all enterprises.
- The price of advertising is too expensive while that of promotion is relatively affordable and manageable.
- Advertising based on assumptions that will lead to sales while the promotion is directly related to sales.
- The nature of advertising is emotional and objective to create a brand image while the promotion is unemotional.
- Examples of advertising are through TV and newspaper while promotions are giving free gifts and discount coupons.
- The core strategy of advertising is promotional while that of promotion is sales oriented.
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Comparison Video
Summary
Generally, advertising is suitable for large companies while promotion for all enterprises regardless of their size. The cost of these methods tends to set them apart.
The core difference between advertising and promotion is that advertising is focused on a larger area with the aim of building the brand image, unlike promotion.
More Sources and References
- Advertising and Publicity. Marketing19