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Branding vs. marketing vs. selling at your startup
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One problem faced by most entrepreneurs is that they are innovators who suddenly have to become marketers and sellers. They are people with a knack for seeing an opportunity or a pain-point in an industry and coming up with a novel product or service solution to address it. But when it comes time to turn that solution into a business, a cold reality sets in. They don't know how to start acquiring customers.
Their first instinct is to start scanning the web or bookstores for resources on how to get customers. But often these resources only speak to one aspect of that process, which is either branding, marketing, selling, or account management. So how do these four fit together, and what are you getting when you choose to start learning any one of these areas? Well, here is a quick cheat sheet.
The first is branding, which too often is thought to be the same as marketing but is really a subset. Branding focuses on one thing - raising market awareness of your company such that when an unqualified lead becomes qualifed (meaning that a prospect needs what you have) they start to consider you. Branding can be expensive, so spend your dollars here wisely.
Marketing includes all of the steps involved in getting a "qualiffied" lead - which is someone who is likely to buy your product or service. Branding can be a component of that, but it also includes a myriad of other items like direct email campaigns, tradeshows, your web site (with whitepapers and newsletters), industry trade groups you join, and more.
Selling is the process of turning a qualified lead into a customer. If your product or service is consumed by other businesses, then most of the time that involves direct sales. The goal here is to talk to qualified buyers, which is the end result of good marketing and branding.
Finally, there is stellar account management, which is all about taking care of the customers that you sold. This one is important because it is many times harder to acquire a new customer than it is to retain a current one.
So think of all of this as a linear process, where awareness (branding) yields consideration, consideration yields qualification (marketing), qualification yields sales (selling), and sales yields repeat sales (account management.)
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