sales-vs-marketing

It was an incredible two and a half hours.

It was this past Monday. About 7PM ET.

And Jonathan Mizel (the Godfather of traffic and media buying) and I just finished up an outrageous marathon interview about marketing funnels and conversion strategy.

I talked about everything from optimal length of funnels and matching your marketing message to the market’s sophistication …all the way to customer acquisition metrics and backend profit-generation strategies.

I wish I could share the interview with you.

But, for now, I can’t.

Because the interview was done just for Jonathan’s Traffic Evolution clients.

So, maybe in the near future.

For now, though, I want to share with you one of the most important, foundational things I talked about on the interview – the difference between selling online and marketing online.

I believe most online marketers confuse the two.

I believe most don’t really understand the difference.

In fact, I would say most marketers think they’re marketing when they’re actually just selling.

And there’s a GARGANTUAN difference between the two.

Especially in the short and long-term business results they each create.

“The difference between marketing and selling is more than semantic. Selling focuses on the needs of the seller, marketing on the needs of the buyer.

Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer”

That’s a quote from Theodore Levitt, author of the famous 1960 Harvard Business Review article, Marketing Myopia.

It’s been said that this very same article deeply influenced the thinking of legendary management guru, Peter Drucker.

Since 13 years later he wrote, in his book, Management…

“The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.”

Did you catch that?

“The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.”

The aim of marketing… when done correctly… is to make selling unnecessary.

To make selling unneeded.

Unrequired.

Un… ahh, you get the point.

Said differently:

Selling is talking about the product and the benefits of it for the prospect.

Marketing is creating desire in the prospect for the product before talking about it, let alone offering it.

Good marketing brings prospects to the point where they’re actually excited to hear about the offer to grab your product.

And when you make the offer, it doesn’t have to be a hardcore sales pitch. Now it’s just a cool offer to grab your product, and prospects are thankful for the opportunity to buy.

Why?

Because your marketing has done its job of getting prospects to understand why buying your product is the best solution for their problem or situation.

Again, good marketing creates the desire for the product you’re going to offer… before you even mention it, let alone offer it.

I teach my clients how to do this with something I’ve coined as the PSEBM Method.

It’s the most effective way I know of to create crazy desire for your product… with just marketing and no hardcore selling.

The first time you use the PSEBM Method, you’ll be hooked.

Trust me.

Try it for yourself.

Then report back to me on the results. 🙂