Marketing and Selling: the Same Thing?
by Paul McGoldrick
I was once asked, at a job interview that lasted two days, what I thought
was the difference between marketing and sales. This was asked by a man
who had both sales and marketing in his job title. I really didn't know
at the time what it was he thought he wanted to hear, but I later found
out that he had a deep belief that the two were identical. What I told him
at the interview, however, and what I still believe, is that marketing is
preparing for a future sale and for branding yourself as a company, whereas
sales was the conclusion of the cycle -- be it a one-minute cycle or a one-year
cycle -- to show the customer how your product or service actually fitted
his needs.
And it is sometimes incredibly difficult to sway a customer from his belief in what he thinks he wants vs. what he actually needs. You know that if you satisfy the former, you will have a bad after-sale experience, creating a long term loss to both parties, if your product does not also actually satisfy the latter.
We don't have a good history of marketing in the semiconductor industry. It is probably as a result of the businesses spawning from technology development and the need to satisfy goals for the builders of complete products. But where marketing is used it can be awesomely successful…
Being in contact with companies in our industry, on a daily basis, it amazes me how much some operations think they are "getting away with" in the lack of marketing. A token person to interface with the press is often it, often someone with a "marketing communications" title that rings hollow. And when that token person reports to a sales operation, it is time to shudder. Very few of these people understand what the press needs, in general, and what specific things a publication such as analogZONE needs, in particular. Other companies are way "over the top," with agencies coming out of their ears, with messages mixed around and zooming, unconnected, in the fog of cyberspace. Few seem to get the right balance, running smooth campaigns focused on selling the company name (for loyalty), specific groups within the company (to offer the one-stop-shopping approach), and specific products (to take business from other companies and to retain the ones that you already have). The design engineer is the principal buyer of your product, but if your company cannot get past the procurement officer's barriers you likely will not get the design win, and if your campaign does not at least do that you are already at sea.
We have known for years that the print media is a poor place to spend your money if you don't get your message across correctly. Even if the days of the misleading "bingo" card are finally winding down, few operations have any other way to track the effectiveness of their advertising. (That may be just as well, in many cases, when you look at the creative used and realize that the target audience is not understood, and is almost certainly not reached.) And, if you cannot track, how can you put a value on what you are buying? As we see the print magazines getting thinner and thinner, with media buys going elsewhere or going away completely, fewer readers are also getting the information they want to see because there is less space for it to be printed.
Online media represents a completely different animal. For the first time in the history of advertising, we have a medium where everything can be tracked that you want to track. If you're brand-building, you have reports of how many readers were exposed to your message. If you're looking to build sales of a particular device or range of devices, you can track the clickthroughs. Once on the landing page of your site, you can track how many went to a data sheet, to a sample request, or to a request for more information. How many companies in our space take advantage of these powerful tools? Sadly, few that we know of. What we do hear, again and again, is that "our IT department doesn't support marketing or sales." Remind me, I want to reply...who do these guys work for, again? And tracking doesn't have to be intrusive: you don't need cookies and other devices that we know engineers hate...and routinely disable. It's all there in your access logs, if the IT gang cares to go mining for it.
One of the first reactions to a turndown in the business environment in our sector is to cut media buys. This is no big news from the past, when a slump in sales has all-too-often signaled that the first thing on the block was the ad budget. Is this an acknowledgement that management knows that their advertising is ineffective? Because, if they believe it is, then they should increase the advertising budget during such turndowns, not reduce it! Regarding marketing your products as an "option" is surely the most curious way to do business imaginable. Why not reduce your wafer buys as well? That would save even more money. Oh, yes, then you wouldn't have product to sell…
When you're ready to market your products and company using web sponsorships...then, do it right, so you know what you're getting for your money. You don't have to go through a learning curve, because others have already learned how to do it successfully: in particular, here at analogZONE, we've learned by doing. We see what works and what doesn't on our own site -- right up front and personal. We have seen disasters, and we have seen great success stories. Among the disasters have been some "campaigns" waged by people with PR (vs. advertising or marketing) titles who do not necessarily understand the medium. Yet, this is not rocket science, and any competent marketing professional can easily grasp the basics in a heartbeat.
If this sounds like a seminar in your local Holiday Inn, where we are
going to waste four hours of your day and sell you a how-to pamphlet for
$19.99, you are dead wrong. This is something that we are giving away to
companies who are willing to say that they know they need help in working
effective online and are happy to get it. If you are feeling at all uncertain
about what you are doing online, contact our sponsorship department to request
a copy of our guide to "Effective Online Advertising." We think
it will open your eyes to what the real differences between marketing and
selling are, and how your online presence can give both efforts an important
boost.