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It’s easy for leaders to confuse ‘marketing’ with ‘selling’. They are, after all, both customer-facing activities. But there, the similarity ends.
S omeone once said to us at a meeting that "marketing is simply selling, but with a college education." At the time this surprised us, but 10 years of running MarFrame has taught us how it’s easy for business leaders to confuse the two.
For many businesses in the £1–10 million range, the marketing function works alongside—or as part of—the sales organisation, and so often is only responsible for such things as brochures, posters, advertising campaigns, and social media posts.
Such things are important, of course. But actually, they play a very small role in marketing’s central mission: the development and implementation of a successful marketing strategy.
A marketing strategy that has one overarching objective: to generate leads, to increase sales, and drive profitable growth. And, in some cases, help to make the business itself more attractive to a potential acquirer.
Business leaders often confuse marketing with selling.
Selling is not the same as marketing – and by definition they are contrasting in their approaches.
How does marketing achieve this? By understanding, and influencing customers.
To begin with, marketing must speak with the business's customers to understand in detail what they want. What motivates them to seek out a particular service or product? How do they compare competing offerings? What does ‘good value’ look like? And what is it that actually triggers the buying decision, at the point of purchase?
Influencing comes next. Are we selling the products and services that our customers truly want—those with the most compelling appeal? If not, what changes are required? Are we going to market in the right way, with the right messaging? Do the company’s marketing materials complement and reflect the business’s understanding of what drives customers? Does the company’s brand and strapline accurately reflect the values that customers like and respect?
Put another way, marketing is all about creating and opening a dialogue in which customers naturally recognise that the company’s products or services best meet their own requirements and values—ideally, to the exclusion of any consideration of competing products or services.
By contrast, selling has a simpler mission: pushing customers into buying what the company already produces, or perhaps has always produced.
The well-known marketing guru Peter Drucker made this distinction very forcefully:
"Selling and marketing are antithetical rather than synonymous or even complementary. There will always be, one can assume, a need for some selling. But the ultimate aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself."
In other words, you might say that selling is the very last stage of the marketing process.
And while Drucker’s statement may seem to be more of an aspiration than a reality, it nevertheless highlights the essential role that marketing should play in speeding up the sales cycle.
Here at Marframe, we are passionate about helping businesses develop marketing strategies that forge strong relationships with customers and potential customers: relationships which lead naturally to growing sales and higher profits, and in which—even in a crowded marketplace—your business, and your brand, is seen as the one against which others are measured.
For further information on this blog or any other marketing issue, please call us at MarFrame at any time on 01494 726 535 or email: info@marframe.com.
