Marketing Vs. Sales

Let me help a few business owners deal with the frustration they feel when their marketing efforts aren’t bringing in commensurate leads, let alone sales.

I’m going to start off with this: MARKETING ISN’T SALES. In the words of Nicholas Bate, the renowned author who wrote ‘How to Sell & Market Your Way Out of This Recession’, TELLING ISN’T SELLING.

Marketing is the reverse of the proverb about the horse and the water but the conclusion of the proverbs remains true. Marketing is taking the water to the horse; [the horse is the potential customer or client who could buy your solutions] but you still can’t force the horse to drink the water. Marketing is taking word about your business and of your brand to those who might buy or tell people who might buy about what they have seen or heard in the solutions your business offers.

Marketing is giving people your word and living your truth before everyone to see. This is why marketers care about creating a brand that the audience can trust and relate with.

Marketing is telling, sharing and making people aware of the magic you’re creating in your little corner. Marketing is you talking to people one on one or reaching your contacts via your WhatsApp status updates, through your posts on social media, through the radio jingles you do and the value you provide in the blog posts on your websites. All these foster sales but aren’t equal to sales.

Sales, on the other hand is selling – exchange of value between those who you have spent resources talking to and your business. Sales is them getting the product, paying for it and using it. Sales is what make businesses what they are. You can’t be busy marketing without busy trying to make sales as well.

If your Instagram account has 10,000 followers for example and you get an average of 4,000 likes on each post but you have only been able to sell to hundred people on that platform; you can’t say you sell to thousands of people because you don’t.

Most business owners think that going viral or amassing a great following on social media is equal sales. Well, it isn’t; so stop harassing your social media manager especially if you are a small business.

Marketing & Sales have to go hand in hand to record any kind of success at all. Both teams have to work together to bring in money to the business. The efforts that marketing does is the ground that sales step on to close deals.

Marketing can be done in diverse ways but the most common form of marketing in the global economy [apart from the word of mouth] is online – digital marketing, content marketing and social media marketing. Any kind of business can be marketed online because statistics have proven the number of people on different digital spaces – the people are there.

So, lets change the narrative of the proverb here now.

People online in all of their quantity is the river while your business is the horse. You have to take your horse to not only drink in the river but to take a plunge, swim in it, make it a home away from home. Businesses that aren’t thinking of going online ever are probably non-existent.

Digital, Content and Social Media Marketing will work hand in hand with your sales team to bring in the money.

You see those big brands you look up to and see them glowing in profits and sustainability? They don’t just worry about campaigns and creativity and engagement. They reel in the fish that marketing brings into their boat with relentless follow ups until people give in to buy from them.

So you post your product or service on social media and relax? Thinking since the word is out there, calls should be flooding your phone like an aggressive torrent on a stormy night?

Social media marketing is the barest minimum. Sorry but it’s the truth when making sales is concerned.

As you’re equipping your marketing team with the updated best practices in the industry, build your sales team. They are the ones that would make the most judicious use of the results you get from your marketing. They are the ones that would follow up on the leads your marketing is bringing in.

I know in Nigeria; we expect a marketer to be a sales person too because the difference between the two job roles is a blurred line.

As a marketer, I worry about sales too as I am thinking of campaign ideas, content strategy and social media plan. It would be irresponsible of me to just focus on creativity, marketing trends, innovative marketing practices without factoring the methods that would ensure my client is smiling home with a fat business account – that’s why CTA’s (Call to Actions) are vital for every marketing message you’re sending out. CTAs are the bait to catch interest or future interest.

So to every business spending so much money on marketing, you might want to direct some percentage of that fund to sales too. Talk to a lead generation specialist, a salesperson or build an indomitable sales team.

I hope I was able to do some justice. If you have any questions on any form of online marketing, most especially content and social media marketing, don’t hesitate to send it to [email protected] or leave a message on my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/adebolalives/