Marketing, Advertising and Sales – Separate but Equal Contributors to Your Success To anyone just starting out in business, fitness marketing or otherwise, the words marketing, advertising and sales all sound synonymous with large expenditures of money for very little return. We just want to get people through the doors, right? Can’t we just have a sales guy up front ready to take the money? And, be honest, raise your hand if you use the three words interchangeably. It’s ok. I used to be one of them.
Many business owners believe they have a killer marketing plan, advertising campaign and sales strategy in place when the opposite is true. When you start allowing marketing people to do sales and sales people to create and upload ads, you can run into serious issues that can impede your growth by a large margin. Understanding the purpose of each of the disciplines is paramount to your success. So, let’s start with some definitions.
Marketing “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” – American Marketing Association. This overarching term refers to what you need to do to create a plan to get your product in front of customers. This includes research into what your consumers want, how they want to receive it, how you will strategically “get the word out” (i.e. which mediums will you use to promote your product) and