Sales vs Marketing: What's the Difference?

In big businesses, sales and marketing tend to be two separate departments, and in small business they may fall under the same team. What's important to understand is how they are different, how marketing impacts sales, and how to benefit from this knowledge.

Marketing consists of the activities you do to gain visibility and awareness among your potential customers. It establishes your brand and brings in leads and inquiries. It's important to understand that marketing doesn't have to be in-your-face promotions to be effective - it can simply be reminding your market that you exist, using educational or informational content.

Marketing activities can include anything under the sun including direct mail, social media, SEO, paid ads, and in-person events.

In a perfect world, effective marketing reaches your target audience and shortens the selling cycle. Studies show it takes about 8 touchpoints to go from awareness to paying customer, which means you can shorten the selling cycle by building up more of these touchpoints in your marketing process.

Selling is what you do after your marketing brings in leads. If you've done a great job marketing your business, the sales cycle will become shorter and easier, because the customer will already know who you are, what you do, and why you are the best choice for them.

Now that you know how these two essential business activities work together, you can use this to your advantage. If you're struggling to make sales, it's either because you don't have enough inquiries or aren't closing the inquiries that you do get. You can make changes in both your marketing and sales processes to remedy this. Try a few of the following...

• Bring in more business visibility through organic search marketing, paid ads, or direct mail
• Retarget the visitors that come to your site but don't contact you
• Get website visitors into an automated email sequence that educates them about you and your industry and establishes you as an expert, while occasionally making offers
• Use the knowledge of the eight-touchpoint statistic to your advantage, making sure that you have a solid follow-up system for new leads
• Don't be afraid of reminding potential customers that you exist - you're in business to make sales, not to be invisible.

With that knowledge, we hope you go out and dominate your market in 2019! If you have any questions about effective digital marketing for small business, don't hesitate to get in touch with us for a consultation.