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Marketing From The Heart: Issue # 21
http://www.zerald.com
By Tom St. Louis
"The Shortest Distance Between You And Greater Profits(tm)"
July 5, 2002
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Marketing (and Sales) Defined

When asked for a definition of marketing, most
business owners are unsure.

In today's Marketing From the Heart, I'd like to
demystify marketing and give you a simple, clear
definition to end all confusion. Here it is in two
words: communicating value. That's it! Marketing is
communicating value.

In a best-case scenario, marketing is communicating
value in a way that's measurable and definitely
profitable. But even bad marketing is an attempt to
let people know about the benefits or advantages of
a product or service.

Now that you understand marketing, you probably want
to know the difference between it and sales. This too
is relatively simple. Sales is transacting business.
Marketing is bringing the customer and then keeping
them.

A simple example of marketing and sales together is a
lead generation program. That's marketing. And then
the sales team closes the sale. If they fail to close
the sale, they should be followed up forever. You
could flip a coin over whether that's marketing or
sales.

When the sales rep does close the sale, marketing
kicks back into gear, upselling, educating,
triggering referrals and nurturing the relationship.

Just to confuse matters a little bit, you must also
understand the difference between institutional and
direct marketing. Institutional marketing is more

nebulous. It is based on the premise of "getting
your name out there". You see a lot of ads in trade
journals that fall into this kind of category. The
ads are all about the company advertising and not
about the customer they are trying to attract.

Institutional advertising and marketing leads to
statements like "Half of our advertising works and
the rest doesn't. The problem is that we don't know
which is which." Direct marketing on the other hand
is always measurable. You always know if it's working
or not because it asks for a specific response.

That's why it's called direct marketing.

Go to issue # 22

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