ShivaniSales and marketing are two essential but distinct functions within a company or organization. To put it simply, marketing includes setting up the groundwork for the sales process. That further involves drawing leads and prospects to your business. Sales, on the other hand, consists in closing the deal.
Unfortunately, for several companies, these two departments usually compete instead of operating together. And, if there is a lack of interaction and feedback between the two, the company’s success may suffer.
It’s more crucial now than ever before for these two departments to act together. Although different, sales and marketing are correlated and share a common goal of drawing prospects and turning those prospects into customers.
When businesses know that both functions are crucial to the buyer’s journey, they further recognize that they can continuously improve strategies and methods and produce better results by working in alignment.
Before we learn the difference between marketing and selling, it’s important to understand both of them in brief.
What Is Marketing?
Marketing tells people about your company, educating them about how the product or service you are offering satisfies their needs or wants.
Marketing takes the controls in managing the business’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – basically, what it is that makes your company stand apart from the competition. Marketing studies target audiences, what those audiences want and how the company’s products or services best meet those requirements.
Today, the most important driver for most businesses is online marketing. Several different kinds of marketing may serve your company depending on your target audience or buyer persona:
- Content marketing, such as blogs, white papers, ebooks, digital brochures and podcasts. Blogging, in particular, is one of the only most effective tools in bringing customers you need and implementing real solutions or education around the areas that fascinate them the most.
- Pay-per-click marketing is also called paid search. This includes placing your ad where your consumers are searching—for instance, Google AdWords. Every time a user clicks on an ad, you are charged a specific amount of money.
- Social media marketing incorporates Facebook, YouTube, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. Facebook ads, in specific, can let you target those with a need (even one they may not recognize) for your product or service.
- Search engine optimization, or SEO. This process optimizes website content, including blogs, so that your content arrives in search engine results. This is especially helpful when you’re seeking to entice people who have done searches that relate to the service you offer.
- Email marketing that targets specific segmented audiences. There are various email marketing software like ActiveCampaign available to help you out.
- Print marketing, such as newspapers and magazines. Many different publications give sponsorship and advertising opportunities useful if the publication’s readership goes with your target audience.
These marketing tips employ lead generation techniques to drive new prospects, and eventually, new customers.More sophisticated marketing teams employ a combination of the above and typically segment their target audiences to make sure that the right people are getting the right messages. In addition, they often utilize advertising, public relations, digital tools like email and social media, and other resources to allocate their carefully crafted message at the right time and place to thoroughly create opportunities.
What Is Sales?
Once marketing has created leads, the sales team is usually responsible for turning those leads into customers. Although sales are usually thought of as the conversation that encourages people to decide whether or not they will purchase from you, there’s a lot more to it than that. It covers all of the necessary activities to sell your company’s product or service, be it reaching the lead, determining the prospect’s requirements, pricing products and services, preparing proposals or quotes, and more.
A poll recognized the top three priorities of sales organizations in the U.S.: account growth, increasing manager effectiveness, and enhancing pipeline activities.
Salespeople strive to develop relationships in a more personal, one-on-one way. Their plans are about developing an understanding of the customer and overcoming objections. Through their more straightforward and personal approach, they often work as excellent brand ambassadors for the company while becoming a trusted partner and problem-solver for the client.
10 Major Differences Between Marketing And Selling
1. Concept
Marketing: It is a strategy based on a mix of activities aimed at boosting sales.
Selling: It is the strategy of satisfying the needs in an opportunistic, individual method driven by human interaction.
2. Cost
Marketing: The consumers determine the price; the price determines the cost.
Selling: Cost defines the price.
3. Efforts
Marketing: It makes an effort such that the consumers want to purchase the products in their interest.
Selling: The company makes the product first and then figures a way to sell and make a profit.
4. Orientation
Marketing: It involves external market orientation.
Selling: It involves internal production orientation.
5. Motive
Marketing: Customer satisfaction is the basic motive.
Selling: Sales are the main motives.
6. Reach
Marketing: It is a comprehensive, composite, and worldwide scope
Selling: It is a narrow reach related to buyer, seller, and production
7. Beginning
Marketing: It starts much before the production of goods and services.
Selling: It comes after creation and ends with delivery and collection of payment.
8. Scope
Marketing: It has a broader connotation and covers many research activities.
Selling: It is a part of marketing.
9. Mindset
Marketing: The mindset is “Satisfy the customers.”
Selling: The mindset is “Hook the customers.”
10. Job
Marketing: The main function is to find the right products for the customers.
Selling: The main job is to discover the customers for the products.
Conclusion
The marketing concept is surely a comparatively wider term than the selling concept. The selling concept comes under the marketing concept related to the advancement and transfer of ownership and possession of the goods from one person to another. But, on the other hand, marketing concepts include:
- Various activities like knowing customers’ needs.
- Designing and developing the product as per their wants.
- Fixing prices.
- Influencing the buyers to buy the same.
We hope that this post helps you understand the most significant differences between marketing and selling.
Referral marketing allows your customers to talk about your products and services. Word of mouth and recommendations builds trust and credibility of your brand and also help you expand your customer base.
If you want to make use of referral marketing, then considering InviteReferrals is a great idea. InviteReferrals offers a great referral program software that automates the whole referral program and offers multiple features at an affordable price. To know more about Invitereferrals, see how it works.
