Let’s face it, you may have the best product and offer amazing services, but if people don’t know about your brand and its offerings, you’ll struggle to stay in business. A good product or service needs airtight marketing and advertising strategies to reach your target audience.
With 93% of online experiences beginning with a search engine and billions of people active on various social media sites, this is an excellent way to connect with others and grow your business. But let’s not forget that marketing and advertising are two standalone entities, with the latter being one aspect of the former. Simply put, marketing is the overall, sustainable approach to promoting your brand to prospects. At the same time, advertising is usually a short-term form of paid messaging intended to drive leads into sales.
So the big question is, how do you make marketing and advertising work together to boost your bottom line? The answer lies in understanding what each does for your company and how you can combine them to create a more effective strategy.
Marketing and Advertising: What They Do For You
When combining marketing and advertising, the first thing to understand is that both serve different purposes. While some companies use them interchangeably, the two have distinct differences.
- Advertising is typically used to attract new customers and increase awareness of a particular brand. It includes any type of message designed to draw attention to a specific product or service.
- Marketing, on the other hand, is the process of communicating information about a company’s products and services to existing and potential clients. This could include anything from print ads to showrooms to customer relationships.
While these definitions sound simple enough, they go much deeper than just describing their purpose. In reality, many businesses often use marketing and advertising interchangeably because they share similar goals. However, important distinctions between the two should be understood before combining them.
Tips on How to Combine Marketing and Advertising to Boost Your Revenue
When working together, marketing and advertising can help each other achieve the common objective – boosting your company’s bottom line. Here are five surefire tips on how to combine the two entities to get the most out of your marketing and advertising campaigns:
1. Know Your Audience
Before launching a campaign, you must identify who you’re trying to reach. For example, if you sell cars, you should focus on car buyers. Similarly, if you’re selling real estate, you’ll need to find those interested in buying homes.
Once you’ve identified your target market, you can tailor your marketing and advertising strategy accordingly. For example, you can leverage social media to share information about your products and services with your target audience. But at the same time, you can purchase ad space on your preferred social platform to target a specific demographic. That way, users can access valuable information about your offerings, potentially influencing their purchase decision.
2. Focus on the Right Media Platforms
Once you’ve determined your audience, you must decide which platforms will be best suited to reach them. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are great places to start. These platforms allow you to easily communicate directly with consumers and build relationships with them.
But while social media may be an excellent start, it’s not the only option. To reach a wider audience, consider purchasing ad space on popular search engines such as Google and Bing. By doing so, you can gain exposure for your business without having to pay for every click. Of course, you should combine paid advertising with other long-term, overly rewarding tactics like SEO, content creation, blogging, etc.
3. Use Data Wisely
Data is one of the most powerful tools available to marketers and advertisers today. With data, you can track everything from what people are searching for online to where they spend their money. And when combined with analytics software, you can use this information to make informed decisions about your marketing efforts.
For example, let’s say you notice that your target audience spends more time browsing through mobile devices than desktop computers. This could mean your ads should appear on mobile apps instead of websites. Or perhaps you should create separate landing pages for mobile users. The possibilities are endless!
4. Be Creative
While using data to inform your marketing strategies is crucial, creativity is equally important. After all, no amount of data can replace a good idea or creative approach. So don’t limit yourself to traditional methods of advertising. Instead, try new things like video marketing, infographics, telemarketing, influencer marketing, etc.
You also want to creatively blend various marketing and advertising techniques to create a rewarding campaign. For instance, combining social media advertising with influencer marketing can increase brand awareness and drive traffic back to your website. You can also creatively blend guerilla marketing with print advertising by placing bold, clever brand activations on brochures or flyers and displaying them in high-traffic public areas to promote brand awareness.
5. Leverage SEO as a Middleground for Content and Paid Ads
SEO (search engine optimization) is another effective method for driving traffic to your website. It involves creating quality, optimized content that ranks well within search results. To achieve this milestone, you must use keywords effectively, optimize all images, write strong meta descriptions, provide a user-friendly design, and practice link building, among other SEO best practices.
Whether it’s content for your website or paid advertising, applying SEO to your strategy means you’ll meet your audience’s exact needs while increasing visibility and generating leads. The reward? More sales and higher conversion rates.
How You Market and Advertise Matters
Marketing and advertising are two very different but complementary disciplines. They work together to help businesses grow and thrive. While each has its own set of challenges, there are ways to overcome these obstacles and succeed.
The key is to find the right balance between the two. To do so, you need to understand how marketing and advertising work, allowing you to identify opportunities and pitfalls. Once you have done so, you can implement an integrated marketing and advertising plan to ensure success.
Have you tried any of these tips? What worked and what didn’t? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
