The 3 Fundamental Differences between Media & Marketing
Media and marketing are two fundamentally different things, yet, we still see people argue with each other as though they were one and the same.
In this article:
- Confusion about Media and Marketing?
- Good Marketing & Good Media (Difference 1)
- Marketing vs. Media formats & KPIs (Difference 2)
- Marketing vs. Media Business models (Difference 3)
- Where to learn more
So, why do people confuse Media & Marketing?
When looking at the discussions around marketing efficiency they usually produce a pile of wasted time as they disregard the focus of learning from another person’s experience and puts their total attention towards beating the opponent in rhetoric baseball and spinning them senseless with semantic confusion.
In my naive reality it would be much more productive to listen and ask if you hear that what someone is doing seems to work, and then try to copy that practice and find out if it works for you to. (I know… being a bit of a hypocrite here as I DO LOVE A GOOD argument from time to time).
I still see a lot of marketing professionals from both agency and client side who apply media tactics for marketing and marketing tactics for media. And that creates a lot of problems.
Now the purpose for writing this post is because this costly debate seem to have caused confusion as I still see a lot of marketing professionals from both agency and client side who apply media tactics for marketing and marketing tactics for media. And that creates a lot of problems.
I suppose the confusion comes from our objectives to find the best way of generating reach and attention for our businesses, and that there is a natural conflict within what works the best.
Good marketing and good media pretty much lead to the same outcome. You grow.
Good marketing and good media pretty much lead to the same outcome. You grow.
DIFFERENCE 1: What’s the general difference between good marketing and good media?
Both marketing and media tend to be driven by ideas that focus on creativity, consumer centricity and optimal reach & frequency. However, the differences in the way you move towards those objectives can’t be stressed enough. In one (several) sentence(s):
Good marketing differentiates you from the norm whilst good media makes you the center point of a norm
- Good marketing sells a product, good media is the product
- Good marketing differentiates you from the norm whilst good media makes you the center point of a norm
- Marketing focus on explaining how you are different, whilst media focus on explaining what you have or how the topic is in common
- Marketing makes you famous enough to be in awe of, whilst media builds an identity that people want to be a part of
2 a. Examples of good marketing:
Brand Awareness — where your marketing mind should be focused on associating your brand with emotional stimuli that builds people’s mental availability to your future communication & offers. There is nothing that beats video for this purpose, however combining several media channels is great support for video effectiveness.
Consumer Activation — making your consumers engaged in your product offering and helping them understand how they can use it. Tutorials, case videos etc. All fit into this category. The example I’ve chosen is an activation ad — yes through an influencer, but still an ad with an activation message. The aim is likely to trigger search making the user go from passive to active. (Now. The devil is in the detail here. Study everything from title choice to description, how she begins the video etc. etc… believe this is my favourite Haul of all time)
Consumer Acquisition — making your customer leave something behind. Driving them to a page you own where you can trigger a pixel or have them sign up to something as a means of transaction (not to confuse with the media format subscription). Below are some great examples of such.
Conversion — it is quite difficult to show you great conversion examples without showing you A/B-test examples, but it is possible to show you something that is a bit different. Using nudging principles to qualify a lead to perform a full conversion funnel is quite useful and so that’s why I chose the example i did.
2 b. Examples of good Media:
Media isn’t built using marketing & product growth models such as LEAN Analytics, AARRR or AIDAS. A better way of building media is to utilise The System (yes, I am bias and yes I just put the digital version up for sale in my own store) or perhaps some kind of Viral loop.
Regardless of what model you use, here are some large and small examples of great execution of growth by media.
BAD BAD BAD = marketing to sell online courses, this practice is one of the most wasteful in the world.
As you can probably tell, I put Hubspot Academy as a media here but put tutorials as an activation marketing format. Why? Well. E-learning is a subscription product where the content is the product itself. Some use marketing to sell online courses, however this practice is one of the most wasteful in the world.
You sell e-lerning with e-learning. People will buy your course if they know you are good teacher, not if you are a compelling marketer… unless your course happens to be about how to market… but that’s a special case on its own. (did I perhaps provoke anyone with that paragraph… :P)
DIFFERENCE 2: Marketing vs. Media formats & Key Performance Indicators
Whereas your media is highly context sensitive, your marketing is more time sensitive.Eg.
- If a user consumes media content, it is likely they will be open for more of such content.
- If a user has a need however, they are likely to want to meet that need regardless of context within some timeframe.
Media can build needs and marketing isn’t bad if in context — but they are more dependent upon context or dependent upon timing…
Yes. Media can build needs and marketing isn’t bad if in context — but they are more dependent upon context or dependent upon timing and as you develop your tactics you should be aware of where you optimise for what as different platforms offer different targeting opportunities.
And despite the fact that I do not like the headline of the slide below, I do think it illustrates neatly how there is an interplay between media and marketing, but equally separates the two given you have some idea of how these platforms deliver content and ads. (I stole it from this really good report
The metrics should align with your objectives but different metrics mean different things on different platforms. In the table above I have simply given a few examples of metrics YOU CAN use and is in no way a full chart over all of the metrics that can be used to construct your key performance indicators.
- This video has a few years on its neck (and is long) but it explains SO sweetly how they constructed a KPI of e-mail signup rate to indicate future donation volumes to the Obama campaign. I still haven’t seen anyone break down a KPI structure in a more pedagogic way.
Key assets for growth are things you should always nurture in order to be able to drive growth effectively using either marketing or media as your main tactical/strategic approach for your business.
DIFFERENCE 3: Media & Marketing support different business models
Perhaps most importantly marketing and media support different business models. Again — I am not saying that these cannot work together, but I am saying that the tactical execution is highly different and so you need to understand what kind of business model they best support.
Whilst your marketing SUPPORTS your product, media IS your product. And there is really no reason as to why you should buy media unless it is a part of aa Reach or Associationpackage you’ve sold with some non-significant margin.
Thus, the way you make money from marketing is completely different than if you do media.
Thus, the way you make money from marketing is completely different than if you do media.
I suppose what I am saying is that there is no point in getting a subscriber or a follower, without thinking of how you can nurture them whilst making money doing it. It will become an expensive practice. Rather — if you do media, do it like a modern media company.
And likewise, there is no use in buying ads for a brand that doesn’t sell something on the promise that you’ve built a desire towards. It will become an expensive practice. Rather — if you do marketing, do it like a modern marketing company.
So, how do I utilise that I know the difference?
Well I have shown you some examples of both, but I haven’t shown you how to do either. Now that would be a problem unless I planned to give you 48 days of doing starting first of May (yes you can either follow through YouTube or by joining my e-mail notifications).
And here is the daily schedule for the project which includes both spiritual growth as well as business growth. The structure is necessary to take the work load whilst feeling blissful and maintaining good health.
Which will give you more than enough time to criticise me and give me suggestions on how I have gotten this on the wrong foot.
I will build a digital product from scratch using data driven decision making, media, marketing, bought, organic, influencer, e-mail and all other buzzwords there are out there. I believe that when I show you how things can be done (not the only way, but one way), a lot of the shade will disappear and everything from all those god d* keynote models and templates might start making sense.
Best thing is I will document every activity which enables us to then go back and challenge different steps and improve them for future iterations…
And if you don’t want to follow that experiment, then here are some other people you can follow:
Good people to follow to learn more about marketing
- Mark Ritson — although he says some really dumb things like “whatever happened to PokemonGo” (yes, it is still the #1 mobile game) he has some pretty smart things to say about insights, strategy and branding
- Analytic Partners — They build great axioms out of research & meta-studies
Good people to follow to learn more about media
- Lady Gaga — she’s the queen of that and has revolutionized the media industry several times whilst being a music genius
- Gary Vaynerchuk — who is a master of driving business using very little marketing and tons and tons of media
To new readers — who is Jesper (author of this post): Global Marketing Strategist & Tactician with more than 40 000 hours experience, 500 campaign launches and several global strategies under his belt. Acknowledged for his innovative execution of data driven tactical campaigns that align with business objectives.
In 2017 he launched the tactical book “The System” that focuses on viral mechanics, behaviour and technology. It has been downloaded over 11 000 times to date.
His main regions of operation has mainly been in APAC, USA, Northern Europe but has also launched projects on the African and South American continent.
