Marketing and Communications are two of the most misunderstood academic disciplines in business. Few people can claim to truly understand marketing, and very likely only those who have actually studied communications can know for sure what kind of scholarship is necessary to earn a qualifying degree. The difference between marketing and communications is a relatively easy thing to explain, but that doesn’t mean it is necessarily easy to understand.
The confusion in these subjects leads to a general inability to execute using skills learned for either, and this only serves to hinder and eventually prevent efficient use of the kind of knowledge present in these subjects.
It isn’t necessarily that either marketing or communications are complicated. Rather it is that they are more often mistaken for something else. So what exactly are marketing and communications and how can they be utilized in business and academics?
Marketing
Marketing is often confused with advertising. While it is true that marketing makes frequent use of advertising, most marketing work happens long before a product is presented to the public. By the time something is being advertised, the biggest questions surrounding its potential success in the marketplace have long since been asked and answered.
The word itself is a verbal noun. While that can be confusing on its own, thinking of marketing in terms of its verb nature is the easiest way to imagine exactly what marketing entails. For purposes of simplicity, the act of “marketing” something is pretty much exactly what it says: putting a product in front of people who are likely to buy it.
As with most simple concepts, the details are considerably more complex than the basic explanation. Marketing involves understanding to whom a product might appeal, how a product should be designed to maximize said appeal, and how best to present the product.
Communications
The academic discipline that subsumes nearly every other form and purpose of human verbal, written and photographic/pictorial interaction is known as Communications. Like advertising, the catch-all concept of communications as an academic discipline is something that might be heavily used in the process of marketing a product or service, but communications implies far more than commerce.
The right way to get an idea from one place to the next or from one group of people to the next is the question that is best answered by studying the academics of communication. Should a document use graphics, pictures or photography? How much of each? Where? In what manner? Those questions are important ones, as they could make the difference between a punchy, effective letter or document and a confusing, diffuse message that doesn’t effectively convey the right idea.
One of the confusing realities of explaining the difference between marketing and communications is the fact the two disciplines are related. In fact, they share many of the same characteristics and are, as has been previously noted, frequently mistaken for each other. That said, it is important that students and professionals become aware of the nuanced distinctions between the two.
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