Lotus Work At Home Mums Blog

In a nutshell, what’s the different between sales and marketing?

By Leigh Hunt on May 29th, 2007

Marketing is a concept that can sometimes cause confusion.  But quite simply, it’s the process of getting your product or service ‘out there’ and wanted.

You’ll often hear the words sales and marketing spoken in the same breath, but it’s useful to be aware of the difference between them.

A ‘sale’ happens at the end of a well planned and thought out ‘marketing’ process. The sale might occur following a conversation during which you ‘close the sale’, or it may happen online with the click of a button.  Regardless of how the sale is made, it’s marketing that ultimately led you to that end result – the sale.

How does marketing work?

As a result of your marketing efforts you’ll grab your potential customer’s attention and build a beautiful relationship with them.  Whenever they see or hear about you (provided it’s positive of course!), that relationship will blossom and you’ll become quite attached to one another.  The more time you spend together, the more you become firm friends.  And if all goes to plan, your new found friend will at some point turn into a loyal, paying customer.  They’ll turn into a loyal customer not just because you have a product or service they want, but because they want to buy that product or service from you.

So, how can you market your business? 

There are several forms of marketing, and a combination of all is recommended to grow your business.  Never rely on just one.  Marketing activities include networking, public relations, advertising, search engine marketing, direct mail and newsletters/ezines. 

Over the coming posts we’ll take a look at these individually.  I’m also going to dedicate a post to ‘Confident Selling’, looking at ways you can feel comfortable asking your customers to part with their hard earned cash….

Comments

#1 - By Amanda Vlahakis on June 20th, 2007 at 11:31 AM

One thing I have found over the years is that it’s vitally important to keep track of the ‘leads’ you receive in as a result of the marketing activity.

Once you get ‘sales leads’ in it’s much easier to convert more leads into actual sales if you keep a good track of who you have spoken to and are methodical about following up that prospect (name for person who might turn into a sale), keeping in contact with them, continuing to be helpful (ie building that relationship you are talking about) and pushing it forward to completion.

You can’t build a relationship if you forget to contact potential customers at regular intervals!  So a crm system of some sort is important I have found.

Amanda
xx

#2 - By mmo on March 17th, 2008 at 08:55 PM

its very difficult to market things, but using some of the principles you pointed out it should be easier. Thank you

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