If you’re new to online marketing and sales, you might think they’re the same thing, but there’s a big difference. That’s why I’ve made a simple distinction between these two activities, so you can understand the difference and know which one is the most effective for your online business model.
The difference between marketing and selling is one of the biggest business models. If you’re an online entrepreneur, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard the term “Marketing First” thrown around. It’s a popular strategy among online marketers who want to build a business that runs independently without requiring effort or time from the marketer.
While this approach can work for some businesses, it’s not always the best way to go. To be successful, you have to be able to sell. And, if you don’t have the sales component of your business model down pat, you could find yourself losing customers and money.
This is why I like to talk about the difference between marketing and selling because it will help you figure out what kind of strategy works best for your business. So, What Is The Difference Between Marketing and Selling?
What Is Marketing?
Marketing is the process of communicating with potential customers and building a brand, and marketing is everything you do to make people aware of your product or service.
It includes advertising, promotions, branding, PR, social media, emails, blogs, podcasts, videos, and other free and paid marketing activities.
Marketing can be done by any business – from large corporations to small stores.
Marketing is what you do to create awareness and get people to take action and make a purchase, while selling is what you do once you’ve got someone’s attention and they are ready to buy.
And as a result, the main task of marketing is to make a qualified lead, with a user who came to the site or appealed to you, after which he passed it to the sales department.
What Is Sales?
Sales are the process of selling your product or service. In other words, selling is the process of delivering on marketing promises. Nevertheless, the sales process is different from marketing because it involves communication, negotiation, and convincing with clients. This includes everything from making the initial sale to delivering the product after the sale.
Sales is a relatively new term in the business world, though marketers and salespeople have worked together for hundreds of years. Traditionally, marketing and sales were considered separate departments with little to no interaction with one another.
This led to a lack of understanding about how marketing affects sales and vice versa. Marketing was responsible for the message a brand communicated, while sales were responsible for the actual sale. But now, that approach doesn’t work.
Marketing and selling are two different sides but of the same coin. Both marketing and selling involve persuasion and incentives to get someone to do something.
And as a result – The main difference is that marketing is about creating demand for the product, while selling is about taking that demand and fulfilling it. Marketing is all about influencing customers to buy your product, and selling is about closing the deal. Marketing can drive sales, and sales can drive marketing.
Types of Marketing
In general, marketing divides into the following categories:
- Content Marketing: This type of marketing aims to build a brand and make people aware of your product or service.
- Conversion marketing: This type of marketing aims to drive people to the conversion page, and it’s the most common type of marketing in the digital world.
- Direct marketing: This is when you communicate directly with a potential customer. It’s done through emails, letters, phone calls, etc.
- Lead generation: This is the process of finding people who are ready to buy to convert them into customers. Lead generation is the process of getting qualified leads for your sales department.
- Lead nurturing: This is the process of keeping the lead engaged.
- Marketing automation: This is the process of automating your marketing and sales.
So, you can see that the type of marketing you choose depends on your goals. If you want to drive sales, you need to do lead generation marketing, but if you’re going to build a brand and make people aware of your product, you need to do content marketing.
Types of Selling
There are main types of selling:
- Sales strategy: This is the process of determining your sales strategy. It’s all about defining your goals and choosing the best way to achieve them.
- Sales planning: This is the process of planning the sales activities.
- Sales process: This is the process of selling your product or service. It includes the following activities:
- Direct selling: This is when you are selling directly to the consumer, such as in a store.
- Indirect selling: This is when you are selling through a distributor.
- Telemarketing: This is when you call or potential email customers to try to sell your product.
- High-touch selling: This is the most common type of selling. This is the process of having a salesperson in-person or over the phone who talks to a customer.
- In-person selling: This is the process of selling your product or service in-person.
- On-demand selling: This is when you deliver your product or service when your customer requests it. This is a great way to sell your product or service to people ready to buy.
- Vendors: This is when you sell your product or service to someone else, such as an e-commerce store.
- Account management: This is the process of ensuring that you keep your customers happy and satisfied. It includes customer service, follow-up, and other customer support activities.
- Sales management: This is the process of managing the sales department. It includes sales forecasting, budgeting, planning, and other administrative tasks.
So, you can see that the type of selling you choose depends on your goals. If you want to increase sales, you need to do sales strategy and sales planning, and if you’re going to sell directly to the consumer, you need to do high-touch selling.
Required Skills for Marketing
To be successful in marketing, you need to have the following skills:
- Communication: You need to be able to communicate with your audience. This includes writing, speaking, and using social media.
- Creativity: You need to develop new ideas and strategies to make your product or service stand out.
- Lead generation: You need to find qualified leads for your sales department.
- Lead nurturing: You need to be able to keep your leads engaged.
- Marketing automation: You need to automate your marketing and sales.
- Analytical skills: This is the ability to evaluate a situation, make decisions, and develop solutions. You need to assess a situation and come up with a solution.
- Interpersonal skills: This is the ability to talk to people and interact with them. You need to be able to communicate with your customers and employees.
- Communication skills: This is the ability to communicate effectively. You need to be able to explain things to your customers and employees.
- Copywriting: This is the process of writing your sales copy. It includes things like the headline, description, and the copy itself.
- Content marketing: This is the process of planning and creating content for your customers.
Required Skills for Selling
To be successful in selling, you need to have the following skills:
- Customer service skills: This is the ability to keep your customers satisfied and happy. You need to be able to provide good customer service.
- Follow-up skills: This is the ability to follow up with your customers and keep them satisfied. You need to be able to keep your customers satisfied.
- Sales skills: This is the ability to sell your product or service to your customers.
- Lead generation: You need to find qualified leads for your sales department.
- Sales strategy: You need to create a sales strategy that helps you achieve your goals.
- Sales planning: You need to be able to plan your sales strategy.
- Sales forecasting: You need to be able to forecast your sales.
- Sales management: This is the process of managing the sales department.
- Communication: You need to be able to communicate with your customers. This includes talking to your customers, listening to them, and responding to them.
- Creativity: You need to develop new ideas and strategies to sell your product or service.
Key Difference Between Marketing and Selling
Let’s look at a “marketing vs selling” table that shows the main differences and the main matches in functions.
Why Is Marketing Important?
On the whole, marketing is important because it is a critical part of a business. It helps you to create demand for your product or service. Marketing it’s the first step in a sales process. Marketing it’s the process of getting people to understand your product and how it works, which leads to sales.
Without a marketing strategy, a business is just a collection of products.
- If you don’t have marketing, you will not create awareness.
- If you don’t have awareness, you will not create demand.
- If you don’t have demand, you will not make potential clients.
- If you don’t have potential clients, you will not close the deal.
- If you don’t close the deal, you will not reach your goals.
Marketing is money OUT the door.
Why Is Selling Important?
Selling is important because it is a critical part of a business. Selling it’s the process of getting people to understand your product and how it works, which leads to sales. Selling it’s the first step in the process of making money, and you need to sell your product or service to make money.
Without a sales strategy, a business is just a collection of products.
- If you don’t have a sales strategy, you will not generate qualified leads.
- If you don’t have qualified leads, you will not close the deal.
- If you don’t close the deal, you will not reach your goals.
- If you don’t reach your goals, you will not make money.
Selling is money IN the door.
How To Bring Marketing and Sales To Work Together?
Marketing and sales have been slowly but surely merging in the last decade. The idea is that marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin.
Marketing is responsible for the brand, while sales are responsible for the sale. As a result, both departments work together to achieve the same goal.
And this is the point at which the two departments have to communicate. Marketing is responsible for the message, and the salesperson is responsible for selling the message.
And, if you’re a marketer, you know that if you want to get results, you have to have a strategy that involves the entire team.
If you don’t have a good sales strategy, you’ll never get the marketing results you want. If you don’t have a good marketing strategy, you’ll never close the sale.
If you want to get the most results for your business, you have to be able to work together. Let’s look at some tips to help you do just that.
Organize regular meeting synchronizations
You can’t expect marketing and sales to work together if they never meet.
This is the most important thing you can do to make marketing and sales work together. You need to make sure that both marketing and sales are in sync.
The best way to make it happen is to have regular meetings where both departments talk about what they’ve done and what they plan to do in the future. You can also go over sales forecasts, marketing budgets, and other important information.
Meet with your marketing and salespeople every week or every other week to discuss the current market situation and how to best capitalize on it. If you can’t do a meeting every week or two, it’s important to schedule them at least once a month.
Meetings can be done via conference calls, Skype, Teams, or other communication platforms.
Marketing and sales are both responsible for the same thing, and both are responsible for selling your product or service. And this means that you need to make sure that both departments are on the same page.
This can be done by creating a marketing and sales strategy based on data, allowing both departments to work together to achieve the same goal. This is the best way to get the most out of your marketing and sales efforts.
Develop the process of identifying Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
If you want to get the most out of your marketing and sales efforts, you need to have a process that allows you to connect your marketing and sales efforts. The first step is to identify your marketing-qualified leads (MQL). MQLs are leads that are qualified for marketing and have the potential to become customers.
SQLs are qualified leads for sales, which is why you need to create a process for identifying and qualifying leads. This process can be done manually, but the best way is to automate it.
You can create a lead qualification process that will collect data from both marketing and sales.
After you can use this information to create an automatic email to the sales team or transfer leads to the CRM that tells to sales department about a potential lead from marketing.
If you have a SQL lead with a high chance of becoming a customer, it’s time to start communicating with them. This means that the sales department needs to start reaching out to them.
This way, you can see which leads are qualified for marketing and most likely to convert into sales.
Create an Ideal Client Profile (ICP)
You can’t create a marketing and sales strategy without knowing your ideal clients. If you want to know your ideal clients, you need to have your ideal client profile. This profile will help you understand your ideal clients and how you can connect with them.
You can create this profile by creating a buyer persona. This is a profile of a person who represents the characteristics of your ideal clients. Your ideal client is someone who will use your product or service and is willing to pay for it.
Next, you need to find out your ideal client’s pain point. This is the key to understanding your ideal client. This is the type of customer that you need to target. Once you have a profile of your ideal client, you can start to develop a marketing strategy to target this type of client, and you need to be able to measure the results.
Use Sales and Marketing Automation
In order to have a successful marketing and sales strategy, you need to automate as much as possible. The reason is that it’s time-consuming and can be expensive to do everything manually. If you can automate most of your marketing and sales processes, you will be able to save a lot of time and money. You can use marketing automation software to automate your lead generation process.
For example, you can create an automated lead generation process to generate qualified leads from marketing. Next, you can use marketing automation software to send automated emails to your leads and follow up with them. Marketing automation software can help you create an automatic process for email marketing, content marketing, and sales.
Conclusion
This article looked at the main differences between marketing and selling. So, what are the main differences between marketing and selling? The main difference is that marketing connects with potential clients, while sales are how you close a deal. But, marketing and sales are two of the most critical functions in any business.
If you want to succeed in the business, you need to have a strong marketing and sales strategy. This is the best way to have a positive impact on your business. So if you want to create a successful marketing and sales strategy, you need to have the right mix of both.
