Marketing and selling, these two terms you must have heard in your regular business days. Some people even use them interchangeably, well they will be curious to know the difference between marketing and selling on various grounds.
In this blog, we’re going to look at the difference between marketing and selling in a broader way so that you can productively influence your business revenue-generating campaigns.
Remember, No matter what your business is, there is no future for it in the market without selling and marketing. By using selling and marketing strategies, a company increases its revenue.
As we’ve already mentioned, for many people, both these marketing and selling concepts are the same in that they think companies target their audience so that their customer base can be increased, but that’s not the whole truth.
Difference Between Marketing and Selling
Let’s start with marketing first, in simple terms;
Marketing is a process in which you indirectly try to attract a targeted audience in multiple ways to buy your products and services.
While on the other hand, if we talk about selling, its motive is to increase your company’s sales. Still, the basic difference here is that it works in a much more direct way.
There is no doubt that both work to achieve the same objective, i.e., to increase the customer base and the company’s revenue, but the way they work is quite different, and both have their individual roles to play in the growth and success of a business.
To understand this better, we have to differentiate marketing and selling based on the activities that they choose.
In selling, companies give utmost focus to only those activities that lead to an increase in sales of their products and services, such as enhancing their relations with the people who have the potential to become their customers so that more revenue can be generated at any cost.
Whereas in marketing, a larger picture comes into the scene as with marketing, companies focus on revenue generation and do their best to understand the different aspects of the market and their audience’s needs.
Companies use marketing to notify their leads about their products and push them to take action. With Marketing, companies make sure that their e-commerce website visitors can be converted into potential consumers.
However, In the selling concept, Things work in an entirely different way as the company directly and completely deals with the prospects.
It tries to promote and reinforce its brand’s current values so that the prospects can be converted into faithful customers in the end.
Now it’s time to look at other grounds where there is a difference between marketing and selling to achieve a better understanding.
1. A Target To Fulfill
Indeed, the overall objective of both marketing and selling is to increase a company’s revenue as much as possible; however, in this revenue-generating process, the target of marketing and selling is different.
After this, it considers all the factors to influence and push them to buy its products and services.
2. Target For Marketing
By using marketing, a company advertises its brand/services and builds its business among a wide range of interested audiences;
By using marketing for its brand and services, a company considers what customers are looking for while purchasing.
For example, As we know, pricing is one of the most influential factors when someone makes a purchase, and here, marketing helps a company in multiple ways in determining the prices of the products or services.
One thing to note is that marketing is for long-term objectives as the campaigns are meant to last for the long term.
3. Target For Selling
In selling, there is already a defined target available before the company, driving its prospects to purchase at any cost.
The company targets the quantity that its sales teams are required to sell and then measures the success rate in terms of how much sales teams achieve their target.
Unlike marketing, selling is about short-term goals as it runs on a weekly/ monthly basis and so on.
4. The Process
Now that you understand how marketing and selling differ based on the target to fulfill, it’s time to look at how they differ when it comes to process.
First of all, the basic plan that both selling and marketing follow is to consider the company’s history, check which things worked for the company and which didn’t, and, ultimately, how the company accomplished its goal.
Once they have done this, the next step is that the two marketing and selling departments to part ways and do what suits their profile.
5. Marketing Process
After taking into account customer demands, Marketers start talking about the product/services and make changes accordingly, such as the pricing of the product, where it is going to be sold, and to whom it is going to be sold.
After this, they set a goal and lays out the plan for the entire process, and after that, the campaigns are started, which target the audience in different ways.
6. Selling Process
The company’s sales team considers all the major processes involved in sales, such as how their team should be structured, what will be their market, and what should be the target for sales.
After doing this, they start a further analysis of their plans to accomplish these targets.
7. Use Of Resources
Now that you know how marketing and selling differ on the grounds of their target and process, It’s time to see how differently they take the help of resources and tools to enhance their work.
Before we start to differentiate between them on the tools and resources they use, we should first know the tools they use collectively.
Well, In this digital era, Almost everyone is on social media, and it is one of the major resources that both marketers and the sales team use to accomplish their goals.
In Marketing, it is used to attract an audience, whereas, in selling, companies use it to strategize their social selling process.
And the second thing which is used by both to maintain a healthy relationship with their customer base is the Customer relationship management (CRM) database.
Now we should look at the tools they use specifically and differently from each other,
In marketing, the Followings tools are used:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools.
- Tools to create content.
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) tools.
- Tools to manage their projects.
- Tools to prepare their data report.
In selling, the followings tools are used:
- scheduling and meeting tools.
- Tools to prepare invoices.
- Tools to manage Emails.
- Document preparation tools.
- Tools to manage their orders.
8. Strategy Model
Now, it’s time to look at how marketing and selling differ in strategy-making and execution.
Barrett Sales Strategy Model
Marketing Strategy: There are many kinds of marketing campaigns out there that marketing teams use, such as Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Blog Marketing, Social Media Marketing, etc. Marketers design their marketing strategies according to the type of campaign they are going to run and their targeted audience. Using a poster maker, you can create compelling visual content that effectively engages the audience in marketing campaigns.
Marketing helps in enhancing the interest regarding the company in the minds of the users.
Selling Strategy: Like marketing, the selling strategy also depends on a lot of factors such as the type of industry, the type of products, the method involved in the selling, the market, and so on. There are many selling strategies out there, such as Solution Selling, SPIN Selling, SNAP Selling, NEAT Selling, and so on.
Marketing And Selling Put Together
Now that you know the major difference between marketing and selling now, it’s time to talk about their alignment.
The ultimate truth is that, No what your business is and how big it is, If you want to grow it as much as possible, then you’ll have to ensure that both marketing and selling go hand in hand because working together increases the chances of conversions which means revenues will witness a great leap. They help you to run your business in a composed and self-assured manner.
Therefore, you should always focus on putting both marketing and selling close and letting both teams work aligned.
There is nothing wrong in saying that a spark in any business is generated from the marketing process; however, it’s also true that selling is equivalently important to enhance a business. Hence they should work together.
