Traditionally, marketing and sales have gone in hand. But they are not the same thing. Marketing is the the entire process of creating, pricing, distributing, and promoting a product or service. It can be something as simple as a mailing label on a box you send through the mail (the label has your return address and logo on it, doesn’t it?), or it can be something more complicated like a multi-tiered market research initiative.

Sales is the actual process of getting the product into the hands of your customers. The two disciplines are related and need each other, but if you don’t understand the difference between marketing and sales then you could spend a lot of time on useless activity that doesn’t pay off.

Online, the distinctions are still the same. Marketing is presenting your message to consumers not yet ready to buy. Selling is getting your product into their hands.

Online marketing, like traditional marketing, is the entire process of building relationships with people who want what you have to offer. The very idea of creating a product involves marketing. Pricing is marketing. Distribution is marketing. Customer service is marketing. But sales is simply explaining to your prospects what the benefits of your product are and making it easy for them to get it.

These distinctions are necessary because you need to know which tools you are going to use to help you achieve your objectives. Do you need a blog? Are you going to have a live chat box on your website? If so, who will respond to messages and what kinds of customer service needs will you address through that tool? All of these are questions you’ll need to answer and when you do, you’ll find that your business will run a lot more smoothly.

Tags: online marketing, sales, traditional marketing

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 9:08 am and is filed under Integrated Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Traditional Marketing for Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.