loader image

Why You Need Integrated Digital Marketing and Advertising To Succeed Online

What is the difference between marketing and advertising and why does it matter?

There are many articles and opinions on this matter and I for one am open to the viewpoints presented but I have simplified both areas in my own headspace so I can put them in a fairly unique category while still affording them the relationship status of brother and sister that they deserve.

In this explanation I am going to take my opinion and wrap it in a solid example of how marketing and advertising all fit together and in some areas may overlap.

So here is my take on marketing

marketing basics explained

Marketing in my opinion is the understanding of your product or service, your target audience and the approach to communicating the value and unique benefits of a service or product that your business sells or needs to explain.

I therefore see marketing as the creation of specific assets that aid the communication and explanation of your product or service to a particular audience.

So for me Marketing = Relevant and high quality Asset (marketing collateral) creation and defining your target audience.

Examples of marketing may include:

Demographic and campaign limits and targets

E.G: Deciding that a campaign will focus on over 65’s in an area with a demographic that can afford a high quality, expensive mobility scooter.

To get to a campaign level situation to target you will need to have done research on the location and areas, the amount of people in this target age group and area, and the type of lifestyle and interests they have.

You may be inclined to look at the published statistics or pay for more up to date and granular information to use for the campign.

Either way you are seeking to define a market to advertise to.

Demographic and campaign limits and targets

Once you have decided your campaign and its boundaries you will need assets (let’s keep it digital) to send people to to see and learn about your product or service.

This may take the form of a website landing page with well developed copy text that informs and sells at the same time, it may also take the form of an explanation video that shows safety areas and why the product cost more.

We are also going to create a radio and TV advert that will all lead back to the landing page (or phone calls).

All in all you will decide the look, feel, branding, tone of voice, speed of narration dependant on your target audience and the campaign specifics, you may choose to use larger fonts for those with visionary issues and maybe a very simple language for the voice over with no music track for the hard to hear. You may also choose multiple calls to action for phone, email and a call back as you know your audience prefers phone communication.

So all in all this gives us plenty of choices to create campaign specifics to pass onto……advertising.

So here is my take on advertising

advertising basics explained

In our example with the above marketing agenda and assets worked out and created, we can now look at advertising.

Now that marketing have defined our campaign and provided us with valuable assets based on the campaign goals and boundaries we can now get some ‘eyeballs’ and traffic (visitors) to these assets so we can try to communicate the benefit and ultimately sell our high quality and slightly more expensive mobility scooters.

The purpose of advertising in my opinion is to bring people to see marketing assets, these marketing assets need to be optimised and highly relevant to be as effective as possible with clear calls to action from the advertiser and the marketing side of the equation, and this is where an alignment is needed in what you say and how you say it.

So for me advertising = getting people to see your marketing assets and having systems in place to work out the ROI.

Types of advertising

For this campaign we are going to look at a traditional radio advert on a local station, some midday niche TV advertising and an SEO and PPC campign.

The search based PPC (pay per click) has been worded by the marketing team for the advert text content and is aimed at getting instant traffic and will help inform our SEO campaign in various useful areas related to keywords and conversions.

To help marketing and also the advertising team, we have also integrated call tracking which in many ways straddles both areas as it is used to help work out how effective campaigns are in entirety and provides data for the marketing and advertising team to work out ROI.

What we will gain from call tracking is to know how effective our PPC, radio, TV and SEO actually is based on the technology that call tracking allows.

We can then either alter and amend the marketing messages for each advert area or minimise or cancel low performing advert options.

Summary

Either way the successful delivery of a marketing campaign is the culmination of combined marketing and advertising efforts on behalf of the company and in my opinion is how it all fits together so nicely, but have distinctly different skill sets and requirements.