The terms “marketing” and “selling” are often used interchangeably and can be confusing to new business owners. In addition, since home business owners typically perform most tasks associated with their business, the lines between marketing and selling can become even more blurred.

Then why bother distinguishing?

Knowing the difference between marketing and selling can help identify and clarify where your efforts are successful and where they need improvement. To succeed you have to identify and build on your strengths and correct your weaknesses. Your marketing efforts may be producing hundreds of leads, but if you don’t know when and how to switch gears to make the sale, you won’t produce the income results you want.

Marketing can be thought of as all the activities that go into making people aware that your company and products exist. Selling involves the steps taken to convince your potential customer to make the actual product purchase.

Marketing makes your company and product known to potential customers. It creates a demand for your company’s products or services.

Marketing involves a good deal of research to identify groups of potential buyers. That research determines what customers want and what they’re willing to pay for it. Your marketing message conveys why someone should choose your company or product over all the others. It describes how you can meet your customers’ wants and needs; how you can solve their problems.

Marketing produces leads.

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Selling is what turns those leads into paying customers. It is more closely associated with a process called overcoming objections. Part of the marketing process is to actually uncover potential objections which might prevent a prospect from being converted to a customer. Selling is where all that marketing research is applied at the point of sale. It is a much more intimate, one-to-one technique where a buyer “assists” a prospective customer in making a “buying decision”.

If you market primarily online, your research can be done using search engines or keyword searches, and using specialized programs as well as various other methods. In mere minutes the online marketer can accumulate highly accurate real-time data on what people are looking at, or looking for online, and fairly easily conduct other research such pricing, packaging, and availability. The value of this powerful research capability cannot be understated.

Once your research has identified your potential customers, your marketing plan will include all the activities that reach them and encourage them to visit your sales pages. Online marketing may include your website, search engine optimization, advertising, social media marketing, article marketing, blogging, press releases, podcasting, email marketing, networking, video marketing, and link building.

All of your marketing activities will funnel prospects to your sales page(s) where customers will ultimately click the “buy now” button and complete the purchase. By the time prospects hit your sales page your marketing message will have convinced them that your company is trustworthy and they’ll be open to the idea of buying from you. Selling answers their questions about how they will personally benefit from your product. It’s a call to action.

If you think about traditional brick-and-mortar stores, marketing involves all of the activities that get a potential customer to walk in the door. Selling occurs inside the store and involves interaction with a sales clerk.

For direct sales party plan consultants, much of the marketing is done by the company you are associated with. It’s the company that has done the market research, established pricing, developed advertising materials, catalogs, brochures, sales party procedures, and more. Independent consultants can focus more on selling, but should also engage in marketing themselves. A consultant’s marketing plan should focus on why customers should choose her over the thousands of other consultants offering similar products from other companies and over others in the same company.

Understanding the difference between marketing and selling will help focus your efforts and and improve your profits. A successful marketing plan will get the marketing message in front of the right people at the right time, and these targeted customers will become excited to buy the product. Selling is what closes the the deal.

(NOTE: This is an updated version of an article originally posted in January, 2008. Comments posted before February 5, 2009 refer to the original version.)

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