Business Networking International (BNI) is a formal organization started by Dr. Ivan Misner. It is comprised of local chapters and facilitates marketing opportunities and business development for small businesses.
The simplest definition for these two misunderstood terms is that marketing involves customer interaction i.e. human contact, whereas advertising is a non-contact form of information transfer. You can read a multitude of professional definitions, academia literature and talk to just about any marketing graduate and you’ll get a lot of different definitions of these two terms.
I had the privilege of meeting a potential client in one of those business gatherings. I asked him the usual questions and he started to explain his business operation. Well, he was basically a landlord to a gaming function. When I become fascinated by the enterprise, I reoriented my questions to some specifics. Sure enough he charges some high end prices for the facilities. Man, I needed to figure out how he was able to do this. With some prodding, he finally explained that his marketing approach pretty much gave him “A license to steal”.
