Marketing, Selling and Advertising
- Why they’re not the same
- Why you need all three. (Especially on-line.)
by John Counsel
Most website owners have a very hazy idea of the relationships between marketing, selling and advertising. Are they really different? Don't they all do much the same thing?
The short answer is yes, they’re different, and no, they don’t all do much the same thing, except when people confuse them. Then they don’t do much of anything, except waste lots of money, time, effort and emotion.
Sure, they’re all ultimately focused on a common objective, but each plays its own part in producing that result. Here, in a nutshell, are the essential differences between them and how each relates to the others. (Please note that this is an explanation — not a tutorial about how to make them work.)
MarketingThe traditional definition of marketing is “identify a need and satisfy that need.” It involves seven essential components:
- Market research — identifying peoples’ needs, attitudes (emotional responses) and locations, and how best to reach them.
- Product Research and Development — creating the products or services that will satisfy the marketplace’s needs.
- Testing — This involves testing everything about the process, from the research results, the products and services, the pricing, distribution, sales and PR strategies and systems.
- Distribution — how to bring the product/service and the consumer together at the same time and place.
- Pricing — ensuring that you trade profitably, taking all costs and on-costs into account.
- Selling — How you get consumers to actually buy your products and services.
- Public Relations — Perhaps the most misunderstood of all components of the marketing mix. Public relations is not about selling your products and services. It’s about protecting your continuing right to do business in your community, however local or global that community may be.
Selling
As we’ve just seen, selling is only one of seven components in the overall marketing mix. But it's absolutely crucial for one very simple reason: no matter how much people need what we’re offering, until they want it, they won’t buy it! In other words, selling is really nothing more than getting people to want what they need.
There are three ways to sell:
- Advertising — which pulls the consumer towards whatever you’re offering (the benefits of your products and services)
- Visual Merchandising — which pushes what you’re offering toward those (hopefully) rapidly approaching consumers.
- Personal Selling Skills — which close any gap left by the first two.
It’s just like a funnel…
- Advertising – when done well – brings in large numbers of prospects at the top. It has the highest leverage because it can reach the most people.
- Visual Merchandising is the part of the funnel that moves the prospect through the filter.
- Personal Selling Skills focus on the highly qualified prospects that emerge from the process.
Personal Selling Skills have the lowest leverage because they reach so few people. Yet we rely heavily — and at enormous cost in salaries, commissions, vehicle expenses, support services, resources, training, etc — on Personal Selling Skills because the first two, especially advertising, usually fail so miserably.
Advertising
So advertising is the highest leverage of the three selling methods (potentially, at least). But, because we confuse it with public relations, selling and marketing, instead of them working together synergistically to produce exponentially greater results than any of them could produce on their own, we end up with a murky mish-mash of the lot that barely covers its high costs — if we’re lucky!
They’re all different, but closely related.
- Advertising is a function of the selling process.
- Selling is a function of the marketing process.
- Public Relations is also a function of the marketing process, separate from selling and advertising.
Get these differences and the connecting relationships clear in your mind and you can begin to increase their individual and combined power in your business.
How does this relate to Internet Marketing, Selling and Advertising?
Your website can be a powerful amalgam of ALL these functions…
- It can be a product in its own right (providing valuable information or a service).
- It can be a form of advertising by pulling consumers toward the benefits you offer.
- It can be a form of visual merchandising by pushing the benefits toward the consumer.
- It can be a form of personal selling skills by closing any gap left by your advertising and visual merchandising functions and taking orders on site.
- It can be a form of public relations by protecting your right to do business online and offline.
Whatever combination of these activities your website may include, don’t lose sight of the differences in these functions. While the Net offers unique new ways to combine them, the fundamentals remain unchanged.
Plan carefully, then implement your web strategy so that these functions are integrated, not fighting each other or confusing your audience. The Internet is a fantastic new way of doing business. But the essentials of doing business properly haven’t really changed.
Learn how to integrate all of these functions powerfully in your small business…
The Profit Clinic’s unique approach to small business is as powerful in the areas of marketing, selling and advertising as it is in business planning. Check out our unique self-help program How to Plan and Manage an Effective Small Business Advertising Program to learn how to integrate this approach in your small business.
Discover for yourself…
- Why most small business marketing, selling and advertising can’t succeed.
- Why most small business advertising “experts” steer you in the wrong direction – because they don’t know any better! (Really scary.)
- Why most small business advertisers waste 90% or more of their time, effort and resources (including their money) doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons when it comes to marketing, selling and advertising.
- How you can begin doing the right things for the right reasons… and get predictable, profitable results – including repeat sales and more customers!
When you know what to do, and why to do it, marketing, selling and advertising are a 90% controllable process. Most small business owners fail in these areas because they focus on the 10% that’s uncontrollable!
More information and help...
The Author
John Counsel has taught marketing, advertising, graphic design and mass communication at university level and in postgraduate MBA and Master of Education programs. He’s been a marketing director, advertising manager, advertising creative director and strategist, as well as a public relations and marketing consultant. He specializes in small and home-based business and the direct selling profession because that's where the true entrepreneurs are found. (In BIG business, everyone form the board level down is an employee. Think about it carefully.)
John is recognised as one of Australia’s foremost authorities on small business marketing, advertising and selling. He's a best-selling author, columnist and business trainer.
He's also the former Moderator of the acclaimed I-Sales Digest, the Internet's #1 business discussion list from 1995-2003 (Now MarketingVox blog).
