Is It Marketing Or Is It Advertising?

Internet marketing and online advertising have two similar yet different ideas in mind.

Answers.com has this definition for marketing:
1. The act or process of buying and selling in a market.
2. The commercial functions involved in transferring goods from producer to consumer.

And for advertising:
1. The activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media.
2. The business of designing and writing advertisements.

On the Web, these differences are blurred with respect to website development, quality link building, and the process of attracting attention to products or services using various Internet marketing tools available.

Email for example comes to mind. When sending an email it becomes a powerful tool when marketing to other businesses or individuals. However, having a footer with a signature block that advertises some of the other aspects of a company falls under the category of advertising and likewise becomes a powerful advertising tool.

These terms become even more blurred when it comes to the search engines and search engine marketing. The term search engine marketing or SEM represents the process of having a website rank well in the Search Engines.

Google, Yahoo, and MSN are the top three Search Engines. If you take a look at each of these companies for marketing and advertising comparisons we find that they all have some form of advertisements themselves. Many times these advertisements are subtle in the approach taken. For example Google has a program called AdSense in which sites that publish content can run advertisements. Google will pay a portion of the revue back to the publisher. Sometimes Google runs there own advertisements through their own AdSense program. This is no different than someone like ourselves that has built online ads to be displayed in conjugation with or individually displayed on our website.

Taking a Bite Out of Apple

Apple Computers is another website that does of great job of both marketing and online advertising. If you have not been to their website, and studied it from an understanding of marketing, advertising, and branding then you have missed a very unique experience. Each of their Web pages has all three concepts firmly embedded into the structure of the website. Apple even advertises using Google AdWords to continually expand their brand.

Some observers would suggest that there is way too much information on the Apple Website and they should stream back what is placed on it. However, with the number of different components and interrelated business divisions, they are in a unique position to promote, advertise, and market between all of the entities. Many individuals that have one Apple product would certainly be interested in other products. Apple's brand is extremely strong and consumers know that the products are well built. So, it stands to reason that they would want to advertise their products across all divisions.

What lessons can we learn from Apple?

First off, many businesses have a wide variety of products or services provided. It stands to reason that a customer that is using one particular product or service from a company is likely to be interested in other products or services provided by the same company.

So, start increasing your sales today. Promote your products and services on the web with Internet marketing services from Professional Web Services.