Key Differences Between A Marketing and Advertising Agency

You might’ve heard, but the world’s a little crazy now. Everyone is redefining themselves. You should ask yourself who you are every day. To reaffirm yourself. And as a marketing AND advertising agency, we think it’s important to ask ourselves every day: What is marketing? What is advertising? How are they different? How can they help you?

(An ad that explains ads AND boosts our SEO standing? And you’re reading it? Woah, it’s like we should work together!)

You hear the terms used interchangeably, but of course it’s a little more complicated. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t a square. Advertising is a function of marketing, but it’s a special standalone with a specific function. Advertising is the paid effort to get your company’s message seen by a target audience. Marketing includes all of that, but it’s the broader big brother who’s better to marry even if he doesn’t sound as sexy on the surface (advertising is definitely going to text “u up?” at 2am). Marketing is all advertising, plus it involves research on who/what/where/why/how to place those ads, monitor the analytics to see how said ads are performing and get the best bang for your buck, meeting a client’s needs, and much more.

Fighter jet, aircraft carrier. Ambassador, country. Power Ranger, Power Rangers. (Metaphors are marketing, too.)

Advertising is more than just creative, but it’s the most straightforward channel: creating assets primed for the paid space and generating paid media vs. earned media (we’ll get to that in a bit with our suite of PR services).

Our creative agency excels at video production, digital advertisements, email marketing, billboards, and other ad campaigns and traditional advertising. We’re also known to go guerilla and off the wall, like event planning. (One event had a fire juggler and an ice sculpture luge to do shots off of. We promise that our virtual events will be somehow as cool in the meantime).

On social media, advertising might refer to the specific content creation. But marketing creates the digital strategy of how to place the Facebook ads, analyzing that online advertising, and long-term media planning of this vital marketing service.

This marketing strategy is built with your business goals as paramount. Our marketing experts analyze the data, research the demographics, so you can better sell your services and reach the right customers. Your agency needs to consider customer, cost, convenience and communication to cut through the clutter and chaos and come out conquering. (is alliteration a function of advertising, or marketing?)

Any marketing agency worth its salt will tell you search engine optimization is a must-have. A customer’s first visit is Google, and the higher you are in the results, the better chance you have of closing a deal. We specialize in website design and full-service digital marketing to bump you up the list.

Marketing also involves Public Relations, which is all about media monitoring and influence to get you earned media: that means news networks and word of mouth do the work for us because we’ve paired story with spin to gain public interest and engagement. By finding the right “hook” and selling your story to the right media outlets, then collecting data from every media hit, PR can propel you to success on the marketing front.

With our modular marketing approach, MACLYN performs all or some of the services of an internal marketing department—at a fraction of the cost. We handle everything: from managing your online presence and executing creative projects, to creating your marketing budget and negotiating media buys.

Marketing and advertising are essential. As the kids say, get you a man who can do both. MACLYN is your guide and guardian to get the word out, generate more sales, and generally party together. We’ve got a presence in Naperville, Chicago, and Des Moines, and serve even broader markets than that. We’re one of the most nimble and adaptable full-service agencies out there, perfectly tailored to fit this new world. Agencies offer you the world. We offer you a world that works.