Do billboard advertisements catch your attention when you are travelling? Or when you are using YouTube, and the ads start playing. There are certain ads, for which we don't press the Skip Ad button. Have you ever wondered why it happens this way? Are you curious to know how people even come up with these ideas ?
Here is your introduction guide to Advertising & Marketing.
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What is Advertising?
The process of making a product/service known to the audience is called Advertising. It usually involves curation of advertising campaigns across various channels which can be both online and offline. It is timely and is used a strategic manner to attain a specific goal.
What is Marketing?
The process of designing, curation, research and analysing data to understand how to define the product to the target audience. Marketing helps to define and communicate the features of the product/service to the target audience. This allows more people to know about the benefits of the product/service.
Are Advertising and Marketing the same?
While it may seem that Advertising and Marketing are synonyms of each other, but that is not the reality. They do share the same objective and have certain similarities but they are different from each other.
If you were to consider Marketing as an apple pie, then its components such as PR, Sales & Distribution are various apple pie slices. Amongst these slices, one of the most important slices is Advertising. All these components work well, both independently as well as interdependently. At the end of the day, they all work to support a common marketing goal.
Another thing to note is that creating a marketing plan is typically more time-intensive than creating an advertising campaign. Marketing involves domains like market research and analysis, positioning, market segmentation etc, thus it also needs more strategising than an advertising.
In a nutshell, you can say that advertising supports marketing by helping create a buzz among the target audience about a product or service.
How do you Market?
Marketing includes research and analysis wherein you study the audience and understand their responses to different languages and designs used to influence them. You will always observe that certain group of consumers respond better to illustrations and words, while other respond to some other form of media.
The end goal of marketing is to communicate the message of the product/service to the audience. You can break down a marketing strategy into 4 P's : Product, Placement, Price and Promotion.
A marketing campaign effectively communicates who can use the product, where it can be used and any other important information. It also sets the tone and personality of the product amongst the users.
How do you Advertise?
Advertising helps a lot to spread the word about a product or service. This is done by curating a campaign which uses multiple channels to create the buzz for the product/service. The campaign aligns the wants and needs of the target audience with the features of the product/services to highlight why it is a must have.
Let's take an example to understand this better. Suppose you have Shoe Company and you sell all sorts of shoes. You want to create a campaign for the youth to promote your latest pair of sneakers. You will use platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to reach out to them. On the other hand, you may have another pair of comfortable shoes which are suitable for elders. So, in this scenario you will use channels like the radio, television ads and print ads to reach out to them.
You need to keep your target audience in mind, so you can target the channels they are the most active on. Most campaigns use a combination of multiple channels to reach out to the maximum number of people within the target audience.
Careers in Marketing
- Content Strategist : As a content strategist you will plan, write and edit various platforms. You will be responsible for ensuring that the brand voice is maintained and all content pieces resonate with the vision and mission for the brand. You will have to create content which the target audience finds relatable and able to draw out some value from it.
- Digital Marketer : You will be in charge of planning and managing online marketing campaigns to promote various products/services. Additionally, you will also be responsible for enhancing brand awareness in the digital space and driving traffic to the company website.
- Social Media Marketer : You will be responsible for managing all the social media channels and social media marketing campaigns for the company. Additionally, you will be responsible for curating social media content on a regular basis. One of the main goals as a social media marketer would be to create brand awareness while also generating leads or sales. As a social media marketer you will also be tracking social media trends and engaging with the potential customers online.
- SEO Specialist : A SEO Specialist is responsible for increasing the search engine ranking of various websites. You will target the most relevant keywords through your SEO Strategies and optimise the online content accordingly. From optimising the web page content to the titles, header tags, meta tags and alt tags, they are all done by a SEO specialist.
- Marketing Consultant : You can work as a marketing consultant with brands/organisation wherein you first start with conducting a research to understand the industry trends and available opportunities. You will need to provide consultant on brand positions, communication and everything related to marketing. Additionally, you will also suggest what are the most effective methods and tools to use.
How to get into Marketing?
Marketing as such, doesn't require any specific degree but instead it is about the skills you have. But there are two ways to go about this.
The academic way : You can pursue BBA with specialisation in Marketing. However, if you have bachelors in some other field, then you can opt for an MBA in Marketing. While pursuing your degrees, you can take up internships to start gaining industry experience and building your contacts. After pursuing your degree, you can start applying for marketing jobs.
The other way : You can enter the marketing team of an organisation at an entry level position. It can be as a writer or a content associate, as a bd associate, as a graphic designer or even an intern to get an understanding of how things work.
You will see that the marketing team is very dynamic in nature and has multiple job roles available. You can learn and keep on developing your skills constantly.
Want to explore the world of advertising and marketing? Then sign up for the MyCaptain Advertising & Marketing Workshop.
