A marketing department promotes your business and drives sales of its products or services. It provides the necessary research to identify your target customers and other audiences. Depending on the company's hierarchical organization, a marketing director, manager or vice president of marketing might be at the helm. Advertising is a marketing tactic involving paying for space to promote a product, service, or cause. The actual promotional messages are called advertisements, or ads for short. The goal of advertising is to reach people most likely to be willing to pay for a company's products or services and entice them to buy.