We often say sales and marketing in the same breath, as if they are a single, indivisible unit. Marketing is all about researching the target market and informing it of the company’s products and services. Sales, on the other hand, focuses on converting leads into actual cash in exchange for those goods or services.
The truth is that they are two distinct activities, with each performing a different function within any organization. Let’s look at the difference between sales and marketing and how the two are intertwined.
Sales and Marketing Strategy
Marketing does all the groundwork necessary to enable sales to take place. Marketing establishes the corporate image and product brand and maintains the reputation of both.
Let’s say that the marketing strategy is to make greater profits for the company. Marketers use research to identify potential customers. Based on that research and sales trends, the marketing department engages both existing and potential customers.
It does so by promoting the company’s USP (unique selling point), or the brand’s USP. This is how the target group gets to know about the benefits of the company’s products or services.
The tactics marketing use to achieve its strategy — also called a marketing plan — are different types of mainly online marketing. SEO (search engine optimization) on websites, including content marketing in blogs, podcasts, and ebooks is a popular marketing tactic.
It provides users with the information they’re searching for and serves as the entry point or discovery stage of the marketing funnel that can ultimately lead to sales.
Other marketing funnel tools include PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, or paid search. A company places ads where users are searching. That’s normally on social media platforms:
- YouTube
- Tumblr.
The company only pays for the ad when a user clicks on the advert.
E-mail marketing is used to target certain segments of your potential customers, as does print marketing in newspapers and magazines. It’s surprising that print marketing still accounts for a sizeable percentage of sales revenue. All these marketing tactics are lead generation techniques which help to convert prospects into new customers.
Sales Takes Leads and Converts Them
Sales converts the leads generated by marketing. So, in a sense, it is a continuation of the marketing function. Salespeople focus on establishing a relationship with potential customers and managing relationships with existing customers.
Online shops? Mostly marketing. But the chatboxes and customer support lines in the online shops are sales territory. This is where salespeople convince people to buy things – to become the company’s customers.
Promotions like the 3 for the price of 2 deal, and client loyalty programs? Those are sales functions that follow the overall planning of marketing. The turnover generated by sales is data that the marketing department analyzes very carefully. Marketing adjusts its tactics in accordance with the results of their analyses.
For example, say sales are higher in a particular location and most customers are women under 30. The marketing department will then put more thought into attracting that particular target group. So, it’s not so much a question of sales vs marketing, but sales after marketing people have prepared the way.
Cohesive Unit
In a good team, sales and marketing work hand-in-hand, with each knowing what the other is doing, and how far along the line to achieving their common strategic goal they are.
Check out our other posts on SEO and digital marketing so that your sales and marketing function becomes the truly cohesive unit it needs to be to get ahead and achieve those goals.