The most basic definition of marketing is using various processes and strategies to find a need and fill it. Many people confuse sales with marketing but they are not the same thing. Marketing can be very powerful and it encompasses several different things — Sales is just one part of it.
One of the big differences between sales and marketing is that when you are selling something you are trying to convince a person to buy a product. You will display or discuss all the different features in an attractive way, and hope to get the person to purchase the product or service. I’m sure as a business person you have probably tried that before, so you know that it works on a mostly unpredictable scale of averages.
When hundreds or even thousands of people visit your website, which is a fairly difficult task in and of itself, a small percentage of them will stay long enough to check out what you are offering. Then, if your product or service is amazing and your sales copy is excellent, another small percentage of those people will become customers. So you need to think about the sheer volume of traffic you have to drive to your website in order to actually earn a lot of money from it.
So, instead of just trying to “sell” to anyone and everyone that comes your way, your best option is to invest in marketing so you get the right types of people coming to your website. You need to use marketing tactics to identify who your potential customers are, bring them to your site, turn them into actual customers, satisfy their needs, and keep them coming back for more!
Think about it, if you are selling dog collars on your website, and you get 10,000 visitors who do not have dogs; your chances of making a sale are zero. But if you create a marketing campaign that targets dog owners and brings them to your site, you have greatly increased your chances of success. It’s a heck of a lot easier to sell collars to dog owners than it is to people who don’t even have dogs. That is the power of marketing!
There are many different kinds of marketing that you can do online with great results, they each have their own advantages, disadvantages and differing strategies but they are typically categorized under one umbrella called, internet marketing. Some of these techniques include search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), pay per click (PPC), video marketing, and several others.
There’s a lot to learn so it won’t be quick or easy, but online marketing can be incredibly effective and cost efficient. The best way to figure out what works for you is to test various strategies and combinations of them until you are getting the results you desire. Be a marketer, not a salesman!
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