2 Oct 2025 · 1 min
Marketing creates conditions for a story to spread and designs products that help people change. Promotion is just one tactic within it, and it fails when it relies on interruption or trickery. An exterminator posting signs at a fancy restaurant during an infestation is promotion without marketing.
Marketing isn't the same thing as promotion. People often use these two words interchangeably, but they're two very different things. All promotion is marketing, but not all marketing is promotion. If an exterminator puts up signs in front of a fancy restaurant while they're inside killing a cockroach infestation, that's promotion, but it's certainly not good marketing. Marketing is creating the conditions for a story to spread so you can help people get to where they hope to go. It's a chance to create products and services that lead to change. If engineered properly, promotion can I support that, but unless you're careful, promotion can also look like a selfish hustle for attention. If you have to interrupt, trick, or coerce people to get the word out, you're probably doing too much promotion and not enough marketing.
Every buyer interaction either confirms or contradicts what we claim about ourselves.