What is the most effective marketing communication tool for you and why?

Sales purely mean the selling of a product or service. The person involved in sales is supposed to sell whatever product or service is available to sell with the company. Marketing can be termed as to market or communicate a product, a service, or a brand amongst a segment of people or areas where that company can make maximum profit. The purpose of marketing is to sell or promote or spread awareness about either a service or a product.

Meaning of communication tools for marketing

Marketing is creating a strategy and awareness under different conditions by communicating or, in modern terms advertising the value and benefits of products and services to a particular segment of customers and in a particular market. A few different strategies and techniques for measuring the market are target markets, market segmentation, and consumer behavior. Different measures are used for maximizing profits for a given product or service through marketing. communication tools for marketing are much more technical than sales.

One of the best communication tools for marketing strategies is ‘Word of Mouth’. It is also a very traditional way of promoting a product or service.

Meaning of Sales: communication tools for marketing

The sales team has an agenda of building relationships with either directly the customer or the agencies or channel partners to generate business by selling their products or services and generate maximum revenue for the company.

To sell smartly, the sales executive or the relationship manager of any organization amends the products offered, price or the service and the product and the means and ways of communicating with the opposite party. However, sales is an extremely important part of the business for any organization. Every department of the organization works very efficiently to make sure they serve well, and on the basis of their planning and service, their sales team is able to perform well in selling. Only the selling of products and services can generate revenue for the company and people working for and within the company.

Difference between Marketing and Sales

Now that we understand the meanings of the two terms, let us have a quick look at the differences between both communication tools for marketing and sales.

1. Marketing is a range of activities that help in selling products and services and build relationships with clients and agencies by determining needs expected in the future and strategizing the conditions to help the sales team. Promotes overall distribution and pricing of products and services to be offered by the company and fulfill the needs of the consumer.

Sales match’s consumer needs and demands with the products and services offered by the company by communicating the need and requirements of the product and services the company is selling. Meets the sales objective of the company and helps generate revenue.

1. Marketing involves a lot of scrutinies done by the marketing team of the company with regards to the distribution of products and services, means of sales distribution, competitors, pricing of the products as per market trends, tracking sales, stock market, consumer behavior and of course budgets; all at a minimum expenditure to generate maximum profits for the organization.

Sales are purely one-to-one with either the consumer or the agencies.

1. The marketing team of a company usually is involved in performing activities like research of the market of the product or the service, advertising as to how to market the product or the service of the company with the help of marketing communication tools, creating public relationships, servicing the customers to the best so that the consumer of the product or service is satisfied with the offering of the company.

Sales, on the other hand, are convincing the customer by creating a need for the customer to purchase the product or the service offered by the company.

1. Marketing pulls its relationship with the client towards a long-term by serving well and analyzing their needs.

Selling is a short-term understanding of simply selling or pushing the product or service.

1. Marketing guides the sales team in building a long-term relationship with its clients and maximize profits.

Sales are an output of the working of the marketing team.

Building a business and selling the right way to generate profitable revenue for the company is the agenda of every organization. In order to meet this agenda, the company uses different marketing strategies and sells accordingly with the help of marketing communication tools.

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Sales and importance of communication tools for marketing methods used by the management

A few sales and importance of communication tools for marketing methods used by the management of some top companies are given below:

1. Regular sales and marketing interaction

Marketing strategies depend on a number of analyzes and research work; one of them is interacting with the sales team and knowing the issues they are facing in selling the products and meeting their sales targets. The marketing team of every organization needs to have a minimum of two to three people involved in collecting such data from the sales teams. Based on different locations and different segments of customers they interact with, the marketing team can then put strategies and selling patterns in place to maximize business for that given location.

2. Sharing marketing communication strategy and research with sales

Any business and its progress is teamwork of the employees working in the organization. People in the organization work in different teams and all together work towards maximizing profits for the company. All the analyses, all the research work and the outcome of the research work should be shared by the marketing team to the other departments of the company, especially with the sales team. Sharing research will help the teams in understanding the layback of not being able to meet sales targets and the position of their competitors.

The marketing team should also use strategies to help the sales team perform better and share their strategies with the sales team.

3. Participation of the marketing team in sales

The marketing team specializes in various studies as they research and analyze the market on a regular basis. With the help of data, reviews and research, the marketing team comes to various conclusions to make sure that the company can perform better in selling its products and services in the market. One or two members of the marketing team should personally be involved or participate with the sales team in selling their products. This will help them in guiding the team and helping them sell better, along with building relationships and increasing future prospect sales. This activity will also help the marketing team member in understanding the difficulties the sales team is facing in selling the product and service and offer a solution to their issues.

4. Training is very important for the sales

Training is an extremely important factor in any job in any profile because, if they do not understand, how will they explain the same to the customers of the agencies. Regular training and interactions between teams help in improving and polishing the skills of the employee involved in servicing the company. Unlike other training such as product, market, software, technical, etc, the sales team must undergo marketing training at regular intervals. Training and interactions with the marketing team will help the sales team in performing better and dealing with situations they haven’t dealt with appropriately. Training secession with the marketing team will also help them in understanding the market and the customers better with the help of data.

5. Communicating with data is more effective

Excel is an essential tool for creating and maintaining data. Preparation of daily, weekly and monthly MIS is very important as it helps in keeping track effectively and efficiently. The full form of MIS is Management Information System Report. This report can be helpful in saving, analyzing, reporting and reusing data for various purposes and for various departments. Both the sales and the marketing team can create and save such data on a regular basis. This data can be used in analyzing and forecasting business in future. Both the teams can talk on emails and other means of communication with the help this data to be more precise in putting forth their point and proving themselves, the reason being that data never lies, and one can trust data.

6. Sales and marketing rotation

People working in the central team or the head offices usually look at the business from a macro point of view, that is as a whole; whereas people working in a sales team is looking at the business from his point of view or maximum from the point of view of a client or an agency. Both the teams do not understand the logic or the reason behind the rules set and the reason for not performing as per the set process or rules. The companies can set rotational jobs for both the sales and the marketing team; for example, a couple of members from the marketing team can come down to the location of the performing sales team and a couple of members from the sales team can be sent to the head office to work for a month. By performing a simple rotation they can understand each other’s roles and responsibilities and will not look down on each other. This will avoid ego clashes in the workplace. This also builds relationships and creates a bond between employees.

7. Feedbacks amid both sales and marketing

Feedback need not come just one way, that is from top to bottom, which means from marketing to sales, it has to be both ways. The marketing team of any organization might for sure have experts or specialist in marketing or communicating awareness about the products and services offered to the customers; however, the sales team creates need amongst people in buying the same products or services. Hence even the sales team might have brilliant ideas which might help the marketing team and the organization is benefiting from. Feedback options must be open and acceptable from both the sides. Just like marketing has experts even sales has experts, however marketing team looks at selling from a brooder prospect and can suggest better ideas to the sales team to help them perform better.

8. Sales and marketing meets

The sales and marketing teams must interact via other mean or reasons of communication tools for marketing techniques such as emails (email marketing), phone, data exchange, etc; however, the organization must hold an annual or a half-yearly meet for both the teams coming down together for a couple of days. This meet must hold an agenda that discusses critical issues faced by both the teams along with resolutions and expectation of the teams from themselves and the other team. As these teams come together they not only discuss important points and issues they also meet people from the other team they usually interact with on emails and over the phone. It helps in developing a relationship and emotional bonding amongst the team; this helps both the teams in performing better as a team keeping their ego clashes and differences aside.

9. Work as a customer-centric team

The main motive behind every team in an organization is to perform better in their own expert ways to help the organization generate revenue. Performing not just as individual teams also as an organization that has an entire unit of experts to sell better and adds value to grow better and faster. Working as a team by keeping all ego clashes away, understanding each other point of view will help the organization and people involved in the growth of the organization progress and succeed.

Communication Tools For Marketing Conclusion

Marketing and sales are two different terms that are very closely knotted with each other. Marketing looks at business from a broader aspect whereas sales looks at business from a very narrow aspect. They are both different at work however they need to work hand in hand with the organization to help the organization grow and progress in terms of selling its goods and services better to earn profitable revenues.

First Image source: pixabay.com

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