Marketing and Selling

Let be clear first. No matter how fancy, pedantic, and to-the-point Marketing and Sales strategies are going to be they are meaningless unless they have the company of PMF (product-market fit). Although Marketing and Sales are used interchangeably, there is a difference between them.

Marketing is reaching the target customers through different channels for informing, promoting, and catering them to your product. Whereas Selling is the conversion of the customer from the mere receiver of product information to buying it.

Anyways, they go hand in hand. Marketing and Selling of the product is the aim of any startup working to earn some revenue. Hustle is required here but under the supervision of reason.

There are certain ways of marketing your product. Not every path is for all products. You can judge the suitability in accordance with your needs, product-type, and market behavior.

  • Market before launching: Entrepreneur pundits emphasized upon the marketing of product before launching. This will increase awareness among the audience about your product and increase the chances of influencing the customer primarily.   
  • Make the news: Perform or sponsor some key event related to your product which can hit the news. In this way, you would save the money of advertising which media would be doing free for you.
  • Announce a competition: this is for audience engagement. People share information and want to win prizes. For instance, you can announce fi
  • Catchy Offers: exclusive offers catch the attention of the audience greatly. For example, if a new restaurant opens in some busy food street they can announce a 50 % discount for the first 100 customers. People will rush in to be included in the first 100 and would share information with their friends and family members. That’ll help in spreading the word.
  • Contact Bloggers and Vloggers: On social media, people with a massive following can be a huge influence in reaching to not only target customer but potential customers too. You can offer those individuals free service for disseminating information about your product.
  • Facebook’s sponsored post: Another popular way of getting the attention of your customers is by sponsoring Facebook’s posts. FB has a massive amount of data of its users’ likes, dislikes, and interests which give it the capability to connect with the customer required for your company.
  • E-mail tool: One of the modern ways of marketing is through e-mail. You can offer some special incentives to get more subscribers.

Questions to think about:

  • What plans I have for navigating the market?
  • What is going to be your channels for approaching people?
  • What’s going to be your style of communicating with your customers?
  • Are you able to start a conversation between people about your product?
  • Let’s talk about selling now.

Selling is more about molding the customer behavior for buying your product.  According to the Harvard Business Review, you need not to convince your consumer but also change their mental paradigm of thinking. For Innovative technologies, you need to convince your customer that the issue you are solving really exists.

There are three steps to involve in this process as guided by HBR.

  • Identify the shift in thinking: This is mostly based on your gut-feeling about the product’s position in the audience’s mind. Where do you need to put an effort in enhancing public understanding of your product?
  • Sticking point: Things that appeal to people may be different and may vary from person to person depending upon their interests and mental orientation toward your product. It may be related to the present phase where they can’t see what your product can benefit them in the immediate present. Secondly, it may be about future years. For instance, the updates you are going to make in your product don’t ring with the customer and thus, won’t affect their behavior. Moreover, they may be struggling with making a transition and not motivated enough to try your product.
  • Build strategy: By keeping all these things in mind you should devise a strategy to mold your customers respectively.

Who is the best salesperson?

YOU.

Mistakes to avoid:

As featured in a blog post by another marketing expert.

  • Avoiding being Sales person: As a founder many avoid being a sales-person may have to do with personal or motivation for this job.
  • Seeking professional: Well, professional do help with a lot of things in dealing with professions.  But here, you may face unforeseen challenges with which only you can deal creatively.
  • Undermining own insight: Some founders may succumb to this formula of limiting themselves with only managerial profile. Don’t. Trust your insight and put it in sales-process.

Some questions:

These questions designed to help you think in these patterns.

  • What’s going to be your sales strategy?
  • Who is going to be part of your sales-team?
  • What is growth pattern you will follow?
  • What’s is average sale you are expecting?
  • How will you cater the targeted customer?

 Conclusion:

As you entered in this phase, you need to work on both marketing and sales collectively and improvise strategies, plans, and channels of approaching and making up the minds of your target customer in a very convincing manner.