This is how I differentiate between marketing and advertising. Understanding this distinction will completely change how you budget and think about generating opportunity for your business.
Both marketing and advertising generate opportunity for our business, but here’s the key difference: I consider marketing costs to be largely fixed and advertising costs to be largely variable.
Let me show you exactly what I mean with three examples.
Example 1: Website Strategy
Marketing costs (fixed):
- Building the website
- Monthly hosting fees
- SEO retainer to make sure you actually rank
- Advertising costs (variable):
- Pay-per-click campaigns
The first three are fixed expenses that stay relatively the same whether you’re generating 10 leads or 100 leads per month. But with PPC, there’s a massive difference between spending $500 a month and $50,000 a month—you’re going to get largely different outcomes.
Example 2: The OG Facebook
Marketing costs (fixed):
- Monthly retainer for content production
- Monthly retainer to an ads agency to manage your campaigns
Advertising costs (variable):
- The actual budget for running the ads
Again, the first two are largely fixed costs. But the ad spend? Spend $500 a month versus $50,000 a month and you’ll get completely different results.
Example 3: New School TikTok
Marketing costs (fixed):
- Content production (you can get organic reach without paying anyone to do it for you)
Advertising costs (variable):
- Budget behind remarketing campaigns to get those followers to take action
The content creation is your fixed marketing investment, but the remarketing budget is pure advertising—there’s a massive difference between $500 and $50,000 a month in spend.
Why This Distinction Matters
Understanding this difference changes how you approach your lead generation budget. Marketing costs are your foundation—the infrastructure that makes everything work. Advertising costs are your accelerator—the variable spend that scales your results.
Most brokers confuse these categories and end up with budgets that don’t make sense. This is where working with a mortgage broker coach can be useful, since getting clarity on the fundamentals early on helps shape better long-term decisions.
Build your marketing foundation first, then scale with advertising spend.
Good luck.
