According to Investopedia, marketing encloses all the processes and activities tailored towards promoting and selling your products/services to customers. It refers to the process of getting people interested in your product or service.

According to Hubspot, sales could refer to the process of selling your products or services, or to the income you derive from selling your products or services. 

Marketing and sales are both crucial to the success of a business. They complement one another such that good marketing skills will generate higher sales.

How do Marketing and Sales differ?

1. Marketing deals with getting the product from the business to the market. Sales deals with the movement of the product from the market to the consumer.
2. Marketing targets an entire audience or region. Sales take on an individualistic and customer-centric approach.
3. After marketing comes sales.
4. Sales point to the needs of the business (that is, income). Marketing relates to the needs of the market (that is, potential customers).
5. Sales focus on maximizing profits for the business. Marketing focuses on increasing the market share of the business as well as customer satisfaction.
6. Marketing looks to create more demand for products and services. Sales look to fulfil the already established/created demand.
7. Marketing attracts customers to the business. Sales provide the products to the customers.

What makes sales and marketing similar?

1. They both have an end goal to increase the revenue of the business.
2. They both focus on the customer/potential customer and what they want.
3. Both require proper planning to be effective.
4. Both contribute to the overall image of the business to outsiders.
5. They both require experienced staff with adequate skills to perform the relevant functions.

What are the forms of sales and marketing?

Sales and marketing can exist in different forms.

The most common forms of sales are:

• B2B Sales; This is the type of sale seen where a business sells its products/services to another business.
• B2C Sales; This is the traditional type of sale where the business sells its products directly to the customers or consumers.

Marketing can be in form of:

• Field Marketing; refers to all forms of marketing involving physical distribution, selling, and sampling promotions done by people out in the field; the public.
• Online Marketing; refers to the use of the internet and other emergent trends and developments to perform marketing activities.

You may visit our article on Field marketing Vs. Online marketing, where we broadly discussed and compared the two forms of marketing, including their advantages. 

Conclusion

Marketing and sales are largely different but are highly complementary. This is because the marketing would lead to higher sales and larger sales would require a wider marketing scope.

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If you enjoyed reading this article, you may like our article on 10 tips to increase your sales as a small business owner.