If you are "Selling" your product, your Marketing SUCKS

I do get your point. When I think about my "sales", it is really more just about making sure people are aware of my products. I know for sure that I have not written the perfect copy to "sell" people, and that I could improve in this area, but I also haven't made it a huge priority, because my products and services are selling.

Poeple don't want to be sold,they want you to help them buy.

Well, back in the olden days before there was this thing called teh internets, these really smart guys, like Ted Levitt, and others, wrote about marketing as being the entire mix of product price promotion and place. The "Markeing Mix" had infinite combinations that spelled the success or failure of a given campaign strategy.

"Sales" was the actual function leading up to the transaction itself, very distinct from the wider scope of "marketing".

John

Yes I understand what you are saying.

To me the Alka Seltzer ad was a branding ad, not marketing.

By that it was like Kleenex ads & Campbell soup ads.

They are about branding to when you want soup or a disposable handkerchief those are the leading brands consumers choose.

Kimberly Clark the owner of Kleenex (which invented the facial tissue market)

Kleenex actually missed the market when it was introduced as a tissue to remove cold cream and make-up.

When the market was changed to a "disposable handkerchief" sales rose quickly and became the household name it is today.

The Marketing of Disposable handkerchief is why Americans buy Kleenex, even though the market of makeup removal is no Kleenex's but a brand also owned by Kimberly Clark Huggies Baby Wipes.

For me there is a difference between a compelling offer, and selling someone on the idea of purchasing the product.

Good stuff John ~!

Mark Riddle

Excellent point's you have here!!!

I strongly disagree. Marketing gets people into your store, but sales is where your money is made.

Marketing is what you do... | CharlieHipHop

oops...sorry. My question was for Mark. Darned small cell phone window..

It's an education about the difference between the selling vs marketing. It is a small piece of the big picture. If you can't see how this helps you have a ways to go... but dont worry all the answers are here. It's up to each of us individually to put all the peices together and form our own unique ways of succeeding based on the knowledge we gain from studying these posts.

A purpouse of a business should be
solving problems not selling.

If you have an approach of selling ,you immedeatly
destroy your chances with the prospect. You need
to concentrate on his problems and solve them.

Igor

Sales is when your marketing message gets the other person to think that it was their own idea to want what you're selling.

=)

~Russell Prisco =)

I think you are somewhat living in an ivory tower if you think great marketing will do everything.

These days most people are lethargic about lots of things. Even things they are interested.

You still have to try to convince them to buy a lot of the time.

They may have heard of your product, good things perhaps, know all about it and even think it would be good. But is can still take a salesman or an email or a letter or whatever to bludgeon them over the head into buying it, because the seller knows it will benefit them.

The problem also with marketing and salemanship is that they sometimes overlap and the usage of these words in the English language has become very clouded and somewhat misunderstood.

Where marketing ends and sales begins is a moot point.

Offer something of value to the right people and assist them in buying it because it will benefit them.

Quite where the marketing ends and sales begins is irrelevant really.

Sam

In my opinion, marketing is a case of taking the letters A.B.C and transforming them to spell S.E.X

More specifically...

1. Establish who wants S.E.X the most
2. Find out why they can't get it
3. Develop your A.B.C so that it caters for people who want S.E.X
4. Target the emotional drivers of your audience and show how your S.E.X connects with them
5. Create and hammer home your USP (which is the thing that separates A.B.C from S.E.X)
6. Create a community and instant recognition of your S.E.X so that trust is "built in" and so your sales letters/sales reps can sell it much more easily
7. Sell S.E.X for a price that seems more than fair, considering what S.E.X will get you in life

Marketing will get you to the salespage, but it is the salespage that determines whether you buy. If you are lucky maybe a few percent will "scroll to the bottom of the page and buy" but it will be a tiny minority. Perhaps that couple of percent will be enough to meet the target, but that is very rare. Usually that tiny minority will come from people who have already been sold to and are already in the sales funnel.

This of course is the old argument. Is marketing a component of the sales process, or is it the other way round. Speak to the marketing director of any company and they will tell you sales is part of marketing. Speak to the sales director and he will tell you that marketing is simply the first part of the sales process.

To me marketing is getting a targeted customer in front of your offer, which is when the selling kicks in.

The sales part is convincing the customer that your offer is exactly what he needs.

A good salesperson will find out the customers requirements and highlight the benefits of the product that match. Selling is the art of helping the customer to make the correct decision to buy your product.

All the marketing in the world will not make the sale. In the retail world a shop's marketing will get the customer in the door, but the salesperson is the one that takes the cash.

Online the marketing will get the customer to the salespage, but it is the strength of the salespage that will control the conversions.

A really good marketing campaign will make the sale easier, but it will never make the sale a forgone conclusion.

While you can make sales with virtually no marketing, marketing on it's own without sales achieves nothing.

Look at the number of award winning marketing campaigns that achieved nothing in terms of the bottom line.

Usually the only people that tell you that a good marketing campaign will make the sale for you are the salespeople from an ad agency!

That is the whole point of selling. You identify the customers problems/requirements and demonstrate how your product solves them. That is what selling is.

Nick

I guess my marketing sucks cuz I sell the crap out of my products. But hey, my bank likes it.

John, Mike, etc. ALL pre-sell in their marketing. They do everything else you mentioned but it's all pre-selling.

Just like Colgate is pre-selling itself to consumers when they give dentists samples to give out.

Good stuff and this is where I struggled for the last year. Trying to sell my products instead of marketing them.

I disagree with the OP.

Marketing wiz tricks can get prospects into the "hmmmm... this sounds interesting..." state of mind, but when they're actually at your store you do need to SELL them in order to convert them from prospects into customers.

You can give free content, you can run an awesome free blog, you can offer fantastic free webinars, etc. But in the end, if you want to make money, you need to put your product in front of your prospects and tell them: "here, this is my shit and you should buy it because of blah blah blah". That is where eventually the money is done.