The important difference between marketing, sales and advertising

I heard the same phrase for many small business owners: "I tried, it does not work for my business." The practice of advertising is a mystery for most small business owners. For them it's hard enough trying to perfect the process of doing business with customers, acquiring new customers is an entirely different challenge. Most business owners are not fully aware of the difference between advertising and marketing.

Take some of the mystery practices.

One of the most misunderstood aspects of the process is the distinction between marketing, advertising and sales:

Marketing: is the total collection of tools used to build your business. Marketing has an overall goal - to drive customers through the process of noting your company, buying from your business, enjoying the products or services your company successful enough to tell their friends and family and come back for more, if applicable.

Some of the marketing tools are:

1. Advertising

2. Public Relations

3. Direct Mail

4. Personal sales

5. Internet

6. Print Promotions

7. Education

Advertising: The advertising does not sell to the public, is an instrument similar to the tail of the male ostrich, his task is to get you noticed for the specific things you do well. Advertising promotes the distinctive features, benefits and advantages of your offer of a large market. The aim of advertising is to bring in leads for the valuable sales process to take place.

I sold Yellow Page advertising to employers who initially believed that the Yellow Pages ad has brought a lot of callers who were just shopping around. They did not want to bother with "looky loo".

If someone takes the time to make a phone call or send an e-mail regarding your product or service, because they treat them with contempt? These people are seeking the right answers to their problems. More importantly, each of them knows about 250 other people personally. Every opportunity to make a link or a sale should be treated as equally important.

Selling: advertising has attracted once the potential buyer, the selling process takes over. This is done either by sales or personal use of point of purchase materials (eg, a shop display, demonstration videos, etc..) Selling should come into play after a prospect has been decided to be right for the product or service.

The mystery and confusion begins when a company must decide which tools to use in the process of acquiring customers. Who should you advertise? Where should you advertise and why? How do you advertise? What kind of return should I expect to do my advertising program? When I use other marketing tools to support my advertising program? What should be my relationship between advertising and sales?

Who should you advertise? Let's be very clear about this. You should never put a single dollar on advertising until you know who you will eventually sell your product or service. You should not even be in business if you have no idea who you want to do business with.

Marketing is used to identify the ideal market. Sure, you can not get 100% of your ideal market, but if you know you will most likely benefit from what you have to sell or a service, you can get more of them.

For example, if you're a chiropractor in a big city, the market could be the perfect couple in their late 40s to early 60s that're health conscious and active. They're trying to stay in shape and are open to CAM (complementary and alternative medicine.). They may have a negative view of the current health system and desire to adopt a proactive approach to maintaining health. So let's say that after determining the ideal market, identifies 15,000 of them in your market area. So now you are likely to reach 15,000 prospects on a regular basis.

Where should you advertise and why? If you wanted to find a Buddhist 34 years years from Cambodia where he would look for one? The question may seem a bit 'silly, but you know you did not start going in all the mosques in the area.

Sometimes you need to delete all the unlikely places for the research to get to the most probable.

You must, of course, choose the targets of your ad programs based on how many of your prospects were probably see your message. If the local health clubs in your area has a membership of over 3,000 population 45-65 years, you might want to advertise in their monthly newsletter. If you do not have a newsletter, you may decide to sponsor one for them.

Remember the "The best place to fish is where the fish are biting." Take time to know your target audience and their buying habits.

How do you advertise? Imagine that your very expensive Mercedes is broken and the mechanic says it is the fuel pump. He needs to change so it's going to take a cutting torch and cut the hood, crack open the engine block and then replace the fuel pump. Once he did, he'll pay all the parts back together and get your vehicle to you.

Want to give this guy the OK to go to work on your vehicle? Of course not. Once you determine what you do, you have to be careful how you run the solution.

Returning to our chiropractor, if it considers that the best way to reach the 15,000 couples aged 45-65 in its area is through the Yellow Pages, then you must decide whether it is convenient, timely and competitive.

The goal now is to understand how best to reach all or most of those 15,000 ideal prospects.

Will he be able to obtain comparable results between repeated exposure to the health club newsletter where you will have a captive audience and no competition?

There is no reason not to use either the Yellow Pages and wellness newsletter, if they pull their economic weight. The aim of advertising is to obtain useful contacts for the sales process to take place.

What kind of return should I expect to do my advertising program? My answer to my clients to this question is usually a shock, the answer is a big fat zero (0). As an entrepreneur can spend so much money on advertising and expect money in return?

This is the basis of the confusion between marketing, advertising and sales. Advertising value in the marketing mix is ​​in the lead generation. When properly used as such, the measure of its effectiveness is in those cables are generated.

This is why it is so important to distinguish between the various marketing tools. If our chiropractor had 20 cables that come each day from his campaign and the reception had a bad conversion rate, I bet that the fault was his announcement not to pull in more customers.

Measure your response rate in quantifying the advertising results. Measure the number of leads coming and adjust the ad copy to test for best results.

When I use other marketing tools to support my advertising program? Advertising should never be used alone. Please note that the average adult has to do with over 2700 messages a day from all types of media.

Marketing should be seen as an effort to reach the minds and hearts of your target market. You must use at least five of the seven tools of marketing every week. Depending on the age of your business and your business plan, you should be budgeting 10 to 15% of estimated annual revenues for marketing. If you just opened your doors in the last five years, Crank That up to 20%. There's a reason why Pepsi and Coca-Cola spends over 400 million each year to satisfy their shareholders bottom line.

What should be my relationship between advertising and sales? Consider the relationship between advertising and sales as a free. If your advertising is generating a large number of contacts, customize the marketing strategy to convert at least 30% of the moves during the acquisition of all of your contacts for the systematic follow-up.

Keep in mind that in a given time, 3% of the market is ready to commit to your product or service. The first goal is to convert the 3% of your contacts. Then, to work on that for those who are on the fence. Whether through personal selling, direct marketing, point of sale or purchase, the ratio will be determined by several factors, supply, product or service and the necessity of immediate prospects and, of course, price.

Not too anal about relationships. The most important thing to remember is that marketing is an inexact science. The review will be to test and try to get better results as the market changes.

Determine the value of a new customer and the value of the lifetime of your customers. Once this is done, make sure that your marketing efforts are bringing in enough new business to cover the cost of getting new customers and your sales efforts to cover the cost of keeping you in business.

Tweak the numbers and track consistently. If your marketing budget is estimated at $ 37,500 per year, and your turnover is estimated at $ 250,000 then you have a standard starting point.

At the end of the year should add up the numbers. If you have not made the $ 250 000 do not just blame your ad, view your contacts list and see if you have the required number converted into sales.

If you do not have a list of cables then we must re-evaluate your purpose for advertising.