Marketing vs. Advertising vs. Sales

Marketing, Sales, Advertising. The interchangeable terms that every business uses and wants. Are these terms the same thing? No, not exactly, and that's why we wrote this blog. Let's get right to it.

Marketing; the activity of creating value offerings to your potential and current audience, oftentimes in a free form.

Advertising; paid communication with the potential or existing users of a product or service.

Sales; refers to all activities involved in selling a product or service to a user or business.

So... these sound pretty similar, right? Let's dive in and fully explain how they all work together.

Marketing should be executed first if you are in the business of long-term business and brand growth. Marketing can help spread the word about your business or product, it can grow your audience, and it can gain awareness for your service offerings. Here at VAW Media, we believe that growing the brand through marketing should be involved in the Marketing/Advertising/Sales mix regardless of how big or how small.

Now, if you aren't wanting to build a business with long-term growth, go straight to advertising and sales. We don't recommend that, but it depends on where you are in your process. Even if you have a ton of brand recognition and awareness, we still recommend branding campaigns to reach your entire market so you can become a market leader

Advertising is something that is started after marketing has been done. These are all the paid avenues you can explore.

Sales is the final step of the process or funnel. Rarely do we see cases where this is the only step within the three that is executed without the others. Sales is the actual process of closing the deal or creating a Bottom of Funnel ad that closes the potential user.

Marketing -> Advertising -> Sales.

This looks similar to...

Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel, Bottom of Funnel.

If you have enjoyed this blog, drop a comment with your thoughts on the blog below!