You could be forgiven for thinking that advertising and marketing are the same thing. In books and on websites the words are used interchangeably, and it’s pretty common to come across people in business who aren’t aware that they represent very different concepts.

Let’s clear up the mess right here. Advertising is just a part of marketing, although it is the most visible part and the one that people seem to enjoy talking about the most. Marketing is much bigger than just advertising. It’s the whole process of finding a market for your product, communicating with that market and solving its problems. So although advertising is really important – it’s the first part of the communications stage of marketing - it’s only one part of the marketing process.

If you can get your head around that idea you are a long way towards being a successful business owner. The reason for the failure of most new businesses is usually bad marketing. They either forget marketing, neglect it, think they don’t need it, or just plain screw it up. More often than not, this is because they think that they’ve got their ‘marketing’ covered simply by putting a tombstone in a newspaper or buying PPC ads. Those can be pretty effective advertising tools, but they don’t add up to a whole marketing strategy.

So if marketing isn’t advertising, what is it? Take another look at the end of that last paragraph, because the answer is right there staring you in the face. Marketing is all about strategy. It is the grand plan for selling your products or services. You can’t think of it as a five stage process:

1. Identify an audience
2. Identify its need
3. Find or create a product or service to meet that need
4. Advertise it
5. Deal with the sales process

Advertising is the most visible part of that process and usually the most expensive. That’s why many people use the word advertising to refer to the whole marketing process – it’s the only bit they see. Those businesses that fail because of poor marketing – a majority, remember - only pay attention to steps four and five.

So if you’re starting or developing a business, you’ll need a full five step marketing plan, and you’ll need to think of steps one to three first. In fact, you are most likely to succeed if you go through those first three stages before you do anything else. They are the core of your business model, and until they’re worked out and confirmed, your business is going nowhere.