Marketing versus Promoting

I use the terms marketing and promoting interchangeably. Marketing has a stigma of evil business practices attached to it, but it’s still a very descriptive term that is appropriate to use even when stacks of Dollar (or Euro given current exchange rates) bills are not involved. All of the techniques covered on this blog can be used whether you are trying to make people aware of your web site selling The Next Best Thing or if you are trying to make people aware of your web site focusing on the Smith family living in Scranton, PA from the years 1820 through 1822 (which, no offense to the past generations of the Smith family, but I assume has no money-making involved).

In the case of the Smith family web site, it is better to talk about “promoting” the site versus “marketing” it because the term “marketing” is a loaded term – usually involving money-hungry business whores willing to do anything to make a quick buck. You might be reading this with just such plans in mind. Excellent! Keep reading this blog and you will become filthy rich (just remember me when you make your first million).

On the other hand, the concept of marketing still applies when making money isn’t your primary concern. What if you just want to publish some really interesting information on the web? Just because you have a web site doesn’t mean anyone will ever find it. That’s why I have started this blog – to show you techniques to make others aware your web site (or product, or service, or business or whatever) exists. Awareness of your web site’s existence is the battle. Even for those people who just want other like-minded people to find their New Kids On The Block fan web site, with no ideas of profits dancing in their head, they still need to expose the rest of the big world to the fact that their web site even exists. And that’s not easy given the amount of data published on the web every second. Which brings us back to the reason for this site’s existence.

Back to the title of this post: marketing versus promoting. I don’t care whether you say you market your web site or promote your web site. I’m going to switch between both terms constantly. I don’t care if you use the techniques I cover to make money or just make people aware.