Marketing for Sales or Brand Building: Experts Weigh In Small businesses can often have trouble prioritizing when it comes to marketing. With a limited budget, time, and resources, it can be difficult to know where and how to focus marketing efforts. To help you sort through it all, we’ve reached out to a panel of marketing and small business experts and asked them all a single question: “Should marketing be more about sales or brand building for small businesses? ”

1. MARKETING FOR SALES
OR BRAND BUILDING
YOUR COMPANY
HERE
PRESENTED BY

2. Marketing should be about building and nurturing relationships. “Move the
Mari Smith
free line,” give your best stuff away, add value at every opportunity, be
Mari Smith is a passionate social media speaker, author of The
New Relationship Marketing and coauthor of Facebook Marketing:
An Hour A Day. Follow Mari on Twitter @MariSmith.
accessible regardless of people’s influence and you’ll naturally build a
large, loyal following that wants to do business with you. Yes, at the same
time, it’s important to be strategic and focused about your branding and
positioning and to know when to include calls to action and ask for the
sale. But, my motto for many years has been “Relationships first,
business second.”
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3. Small businesses need to focus on sales. They need revenue in the door
Jill Konrath
— and they need it now if they’re going to survive. While branding is nice,
Jill Konrath is a recognized sales strategist, speaker and author
who offers fresh strategies and practical advice for selling to today’s
crazy-busy prospects. Both her books, SNAP Selling and Selling to
Big Companies are Top 20 sales books on Amazon.
it does not pay the bills. And, savvy small businesses will seriously
pursue sales opportunities with bigger accounts. Seriously. Landing one
decent size client can move a small business out of survival mode and
into growth mode. Then, they look at doing branding.
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5. I don’t think brand or sales is an either/or game (because you need some
Aaron Wall
level of brand to be able to charge premium non-commodity rates). At the
Aaron Wall is an SEO expert and the founder of SEOBook, a site
offers marketing tips, search analysis, online business tips, and
general commentary on the evolution of the web from an
algorithmic, publishing & business model perspective.
same time, it is very easy to chalk everything up to brand & then sort of
never really have it back out. Brand building is a higher level business
function. You need sales and interactions to fund the business & those
interactions help shape the brand perception (and build word of
mouth).The thing about online is the friction of the penny gap…if you
make something accessible for free & it is good lots of people will see it
and use it. From that exposure some people will want to pay for more.
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6. Small businesses should be sales-driven. The big companies have the
Paul Gillin
luxury and budget to worry about their brand. Focus on the stuff that’s
Paul Gillin is the author of three books about social media
marketing, including the recently published Social Marketing to the
Business Customer.
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going to keep you in business, which is selling.

7. Effective marketing is systems that automatically deliver ideal prospects,
Paul Colligan
predictably and dependably, to you. Sales is what you do when those
Paul Colligan helps busy people leverage new media to get their
message out to more people, with less effort, and for greater profit.
He is CEO of Colligan.com, Education Czar for Traffic Geyser Inc.,
and Executive Producer for eMarketingVids.com.
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prospects arrive at your store, order form, etc. First marketing, then sales.
If you make the marketing about the sale, it’s not effective. Brand building
is one method of marketing – but not necessarily an ideal one.

8. Sales and branding are closely connected since part of developing a
Beth Goldstein
brand value to customers is often through direct sales channels like oneBeth Goldstein is an author, educator at Boston University and
founder of Marketing Edge Consulting Group. Beth has
empowered hundreds of entrepreneurs to successfully grow their
companies. Her new book is “Lucky By Design“.
on-one outreach with customers. Your brand position must be completely
aligned and in sync with how you communicate your benefits to your
customers. Therefore, in building your sales efforts you must be
concurrently building your brand presence and ensuring you continue to
meet customer needs, currently and as they evolve.
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9. At the end of the day it is of course about the sweet ring of the cash
Toby Bloomberg
register. How we get to the sale becomes more complex daily. With the
Toby Bloomberg consults, speaks and trains on how to combine
social media with branding, marketing and other customer touch
points to build relationships. Her blog Diva Marketing is a Forbes
Pick of Best Women Blogs on Marketing & Social Media. She is
the author of Social Media Marketing GPS. Connect with her on
@tobydiva.
influence of the digital world and as Brian Solias calls it, the connected
customer, sales, marketing, branding, PR, customer care merges and
blurs. We can no longer build our companies based on a silo mentality.
Without an integrated plan that creates a seamless customer experience
(online and offline) those sales bells will be few and far between.
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10. It depends on your goals. Usually, it’s both.
Tamar Weinberg
Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast with a passion for all
things tech and productivity. She provides consulting in internet
marketing and manages Community Support & Advertising at
Mashable. Tamar is also the author of The New Community Rules
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11. I don’t think it’s one or the other…SMB’s need both and there are certain
Joe Pulizzi
activities that do both. A business shouldn’t only focus on one aspect of
Joe Pulizzi is a leading author, speaker and strategist for content
marketing. Joe is first and foremost a content marketing evangelist,
and founded the Content Marketing Institute, Junta42, Content
Marketing World and Chief Content Officer magazine. Joe is also
CEO of SocialTract, and co-author of the book Get Content Get
Customers and Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World
Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand.
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the buying cycle.