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What Is the Difference Between Advertising & Promotion

Many small businesses lump advertising and promotion under the same expense category, giving both functions to the same manager. Advertising generally refers to controlled, paid messages in the media, while promotion includes paid and free marketing activities, such as sales or sponsorships. Until your business is large enough to have both departments, consider putting advertising and promotion, along with public relations, under the direction of a marketing person.

Advertising

In its narrowest sense, advertising refers to messages you send to the public via newspaper and magazine displays, billboards, TV and radio commercials and website banners. You control the content and graphics and pay for space to display your message. The ads are meant to work graphically with the medium to make your message stand out, competing with articles, graphics, music, shows and other ads, called “clutter.” The more ads a medium has, the more “clutter” it contains and the less attractive it is.

Promotion

Promotion, more commonly referred to as promotions, is a method of announcing your product or service using more dynamic means you can more easily modify or change. Examples include coupons; sales; celebrity endorsements; event, team or league sponsorships; contests; rebates; free samples; catalogs; social media; donations; and direct mail. Unlike public relations, which is an attempt to get the media to promote your message at no cost, promotion is often an expense. A social media campaign is an example of a promotion that has no cost, other than staff time.

Targeting Customers

Advertising gives you a better chance to target specific customers, based on the fact that media outlets usually have specific reader, visitor, viewer or listener demographics you can review. Business that sell advertising usually provide potential advertisers with a media kit that contains the medium’s overall circulation or audience number and a breakdown by such factors as gender, ethnicity, age, marital and parental status, education and income level.

With promotions, you can’t predict who will see your message as well as when you buy advertising. For example, if you want to target women age 25 to 45, you can improve your chances of reaching them if you sponsor a women’s 5K race, but you won’t know for sure until you see the signups. You also won’t know the makeup of the spectators. If you offer a coupon, trade laws might not let you offer a special price for women age 25 to 45, so your coupons might be used by a wide variety of men and women. When you ask customers to "like you" on Facebook, for example, you don’t know who will see your message.

Accounting

You can record advertising and promotions the same way for accounting and tax purposes. If you spend $1,000 on a magazine ad and $1,000 for a 5K race sponsorship, you can put both as an expense under marketing. You can also charge the expense of creating the ad and any logos or materials for the race sponsorship to your marketing budget.

Marketing, Advertising & Promotions

by Sam Ashe-Edmunds

Marketing, advertising, and promotions are often used interchangeably by small businesses that don't really understand the process of effectively bringing products or services to the marketplace. The more subjective disciplines of advertising and promotions support objective, upfront marketing research. Understanding what each of these terms means and how they relate to each other will help you effectively increase your sales.

Marketing

Marketing is an objective discipline that involves the research, creation, pricing, testing, and distribution of a product or service. Marketing involves analyzing the competition by researching their pricing, products, where they sell, and age, race, gender, and other characteristics of their customers. A small business uses market research to test ideas and products on potential customers and to get feedback on the products or service. Market research also discovers what price consumers would pay for a proposed product or service, where they would purchase it, and how often they would use it.

Advertising

Advertising is paying to get your message to potential customers. Unlike public relations, advertising lets you control your message. A classic advertising strategy includes demonstrating a need or a problem to your potential customer; offering a solution to help fill that need or solve the problem; and showing how your product or service does that. Good advertising sells the benefits of a product or service, rather than simply discuss the product or service.

Advertising a product that is overpriced or unavailable in stores doesn't make sense, nor does placing an ad for women's personal care products in a men's sports magazine. This is why marketing functions come first in the sales process. Advertising supports marketing and applies a specific message to specific audiences defined by market research as the best way to achieve success.

Promotions

Promotions are events, activities, sponsorships, and contests that create and increase awareness of your product or service. Promotions differ from advertising because they are less educational in nature than traditional advertisements. Sponsoring a youth sports organization, giving away free samples at a mall, offering coupons in grocery stores, or promoting a sweepstakes or contest that bring customers to your website are all examples of promotions. Promotions should be geared toward the consumer demographic your market research determined is your best potential customer.

Branding

Branding is creating a consistent image for your company, products, and services. The key to success in branding is to communicate a consistent message to consumers about your product or service in all of your advertising, promotions, and public relations. For example, a local pizzeria that wants to brand itself as the best Italian restaurant in town should not offer tacos or stir-fry on its menu. That dilutes its brand and confuses consumers as to what type of restaurant it really is. All small-business advertising and promotions should reinforce the brand.

Evaluation

It's important for small businesses to evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing, advertising, and promotions on a regular basis. This ensures that your communications support the original marketing research and strategy. Audits of your advertising, public relations, and promotions may reveal flaws or incorrect assumptions in your original marketing plan.

2016 Salary Information for Sales Managers

Sales managers earned a median annual salary of $117,960 in 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the low end, sales managers earned a 25th percentile salary of $79,420, meaning 75 percent earned more than this amount. The 75th percentile salary is $168,300, meaning 25 percent earn more. In 2016, 385,500 people were employed in the U.S. as sales managers.