Marketing and Sales - Know Their Differences for an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy

Marketing starts looking quite different from sales when an organization grows — with specialized responsibilities and rules. For starters, marketing generates leads by promoting your business while sales are about converting those leads into revenue.  Marketing has a much wider outlook as they focus more on brand visibility and awareness or getting your brand in front of as many eyes as possible.  The objective is to build trust and credibility with potential customers.  Sales on the other hand, tends to focus more on direct results.  The sales person's job is to convert any leads that were generated as a result of the marketing team's efforts. 

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How close you are to ensuring a potential lead becomes a customer is a difference between these two terms. Even though the end game for both sales and marketing is turning a profit, their approaches are quite different.

Marketing includes analyzing your consumer base, thus making informed decisions on how to best position your product for a better appeal. Sales, on the other hand, includes planning product movement from the business to the consumer. Below is a breakdown of what each term encompasses to give you a better understanding.

With marketing, it's about strategies that your business can leverage to reach new leads. Therefore, you get to generate more interest in your product and/or services. It has measurable benchmarks that assist you in deciding whether the strategies you use produce results at a competitive price.  As an example, a marketing team may develop campaigns ads that runs on television, radio, print or social media.  The objective is to get the brand in front of a wide set of potential customers.

With sales, it's about convincing someone to buy a product or service from your business. Most of the time you will have to use some level of interpersonal interaction to convince that person to become your customer. However, these consumers are often brought to you via the marketing efforts you put in place.  Following the example above, if leads are generated from the marketing campaign that the marketing team put in place, then the sales team will begin to nurture those leads, with the objective of converting them into a sale for the company.

Marketing is the fuel of your business because it is a way to promote your business. Personally, I consider it to be a prerequisite to sales.  A good marketing campaign can generate leads that is then passed on to the sales team for action.  You can only start your sales effort when you get your marketing right. With today's technological advancement, the marketplace has quickly become more digital. Therefore, it's time to look towards digital marketing to establish yourself within your industry.

Digital marketing techniques let you share your services or products with numerous users and social media groups. This allows you to get your brand's message in front of potentially thousands or millions of would be buyers. Thus, you can get more leads to convert into sales. Digital Marketing is a lower cost alternative to traditional marketing, such as television and radio.  In a sense, Digital Marketing has leveled the playing field so that small businesses can promote their businesses and reach a large audience, which in the past was cost prohibitive.  Here are three ways to better understand how digital marketing services increase sales.

First, you have to set clear goals to reach a specific objective. With digital marketing services, it's easier to define an objective like reaching 20k potential customers within a month. Keep in mind that if you are able to reach 20K potential buyers and you achieve a 1% conversion rate, then you need to have a sales team that can potentially close 200 potential customers.  Therefore setting achievable goals that is aligned with your objective is very important.  It is easier to achieve your sales goals when you have the leads.

Technology can be overwhelming to some as there is so much information out there.  Depending on who you talk to, you can easily get a different perspective, based on that individual's experience.  Digital marketing includes content marketing techniques that ensure you put the right information on the internet. These techniques are only effective after thorough market research. Equally, you learn more about your buyer persona and how to brand your business effectively.  It is also very important to understand where your potential buyers hangout; in terms of social media.  By understanding your buyer persona, it will help you to know if you should be focusing your efforts on say Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, etc.  Doing your due diligence in your research will definitely give you an advantage, as oppose to just winging it.

Most consumers will not purchase from you the first time they see your brand.  Reaching your targeted audience at least two to three times is an excellent practice to convert more leads. Digital marketing services will help you reach your audience repeatedly through techniques like remarketing. Remarketing will allow you to target users who may have visited your website previously or interacted with one of your ads, and did not make a purchase.  You can effectively remarket or retag those users to bring them back to your website, thus generating more sales.  Remarketing allows you to follow-up with users who previously visited your site, getting your brand in front of them for a second or third time. 

Social media is a low-cost medium to promote your business. Therefore, you get high-quality leads that can easily convert to sales. At Digital Edge Marketing Agency, we can help you take your business to the next level with our cost-effective Digital Marketing Services. Ensure you contact us today to take your business to the next level.