You have been pushing out advertisements for a while now but your business and sales aren’t growing. Sound familiar? In order to pinpoint what you are missing, you need to understand all the aspects of marketing and how each one brings value to your business.
On today’s episode of “Marketing Matters,” Morgan and Sarah are discussing what marketing is and everything that it encompasses. We’ll focus on how each aspect of marketing is different and how they work together to help achieve business development. Tune in to learn what you could be missing to make your marketing strategy truly effective.
Highlights:
- What are the 4 P’s of marketing?
- What is the difference between sales and business development?
- Why is sales and marketing alignment important?
- How has marketing evolved for the energy industry, specifically?
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Marketing Matters is brought to you by ADV Marketing
Sarah Roberts
We’re excited to be bringing you this podcast produced by our company, ADV Marketing. ADV Marketing develops high-quality and cost-effective marketing materials for a wide range of businesses. Our relationship-driven business model and customized marketing solutions make us the perfect partner for small businesses looking to grow. I’m Sarah, Creative Director at ADV Marketing. Join me here with the rest of my team on Marketing Matters every other Monday to discuss business-to-business marketing topics. Now let’s get into the episode.
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the season finale of season four? I think it’s season four, yeah season four. Okay. Season four Finale of Marketing Matters, a podcast where we discuss all things marketing-related and how it applies to your business. I keep looking down to make sure I say that right, but I’m pretty sure I can say it by myself at this point, but I always get nervous.
Morgan Hutcherson
I think it’s because you have your notes.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah.
Morgan Hutcherson
Like any time, you do a presentation without notes, you’re, like, really confident, but when you do have your notes, you’re, like, so fixated on saying the right thing.
Sarah Roberts
Oh yeah. Like there’s pressure now because you have no reason to be wrong.
Anyway, I’m Sarah, and this is Morgan, and today we have a fun topic for the finale. We’re going to talk about the difference between advertising and marketing and sales and business development. So, this is a consistent theme throughout everything, every episode basically, that we talk about, because marketing and sales alignment is so important to us and for our clients just in the space that we’re in.
But we’ve never actually done an episode where we like, sat down and defined them all clearly. So, this is what that episode is, the final one.
Morgan Hutcherson
I feel like these are a lot of buzzwords that people hear that if you don’t know what they are, you’re just like, “That’s just like nonsense.”
Sarah Roberts
Yes. I also think it’s important because if you’re ever so if you’re an owner for business or a key leader in a business and you’re sitting around your big boardroom and you’re like, how do we get more clients?
That question is really big. So, you can say, we should do advertising. That means something totally different, then we should invest in marketing. So, knowing, knowing what’s available to you basically makes it easier to make good decisions going forward and then you know what to do to improve your business or improve your objectives or whatever you need to do.
So, we’re going to talk about those. First, I am going to give you my fun definition of marketing. This going to sound so funny, but it came to me in a dream, this visualization.
Morgan Hutcherson
Oh, it’s a visualization.
Sarah Roberts
I’m going to describe it.
Morgan Hutcherson
Oh, okay.
Sarah Roberts
So, also how nerdy of me to be dreaming about, like, what is marketing?
Morgan Hutcherson
Okay, no, this is a side note, but I have a lot of friends in marketing, and like, we’ve come together and realized that we dream about our work a lot and I think it’s the creative side of it. Like, it’s hard to turn it off, but like, I will have a dream about, like a Canva design that I want to do or something. And I’m just like, why? Why am I dreaming about, like, graphic design?
Sarah Roberts
Oh my gosh. I have dreams, that makes me feel not alone. I feel like I am understood because that is so real. Okay. Anyway, this came to me in one of my work dreams. And if I could describe marketing as like a visual, I would put like, like business and business development is like a big amorphous thing with the whole, marketing is like a piece or like, let me start over.
The market in general is this big thing. And there’s like, so, like, it’s really messed up. Remember, this is a dream, right? So, this visual is very meta.
Morgan Hutcherson
I’m thinking like the monster from Stranger Things.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Just like, maybe not monstrous. It’s not scary, but, like, it has no definition or whatever. Marketing comes in and makes it into a thing. Like, you’re understanding. You’re literally marketing.
Morgan Hutcherson
Oh my gosh. Like, you know, Oobleck. Have you heard of that? It’s when you take cornstarch and water and like, when you’re moving it, it’s like a solid.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, you’re like, giving it meaning. It’s a verb. Marketing is a verb. So, you’re like transforming into a thing that you can give to people. It is like, that is my definition and it is so all-encompassing and big and like, not just one thing. I think that’s why my dream was like, so abstract because it’s like it’s not just one thing. Yeah. Like all together to give you a better thing. Anyway, so that’s my dream. I think a better way to describe it is literally turning your product into something the market would want.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. Just what your customer or ideal customer would want.
Sarah Roberts
Very client-centric. You are understanding your client, meeting in the middle between product development and client getting.
Morgan Hutcherson
And I feel like that’s why people don’t really understand what marketing is, because they think, I just got to show that my business is so amazing that we do cool things and that we’re so smart and they don’t think about it appealing to the client.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Self-promotion is not marketing.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. Think about it. Like, do you really want to listen to somebody who talks about how great they are all day? Or do you want to talk to somebody and have a conversation with them about the value they can give to you?
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, exactly. And that’s part of like forming this Morpheus thing into something concrete and valuable.
And you are giving them away.
Morgan Hutcherson
That is a good metaphor.
Sarah Roberts
I don’t. I don’t know. I feel like it’s very abstract, but, you know, I do dream about marketing, so maybe I’m just that kind of person. But anyway, there is actually a more concrete definition of marketing. It has to do with an acronym. I guess it’s an acronym is the four Ps of marketing. So. Morgan, describe what the four Ps are.
Morgan Hutcherson
Okay. The four P’s you got the product, which is like, what are you selling? Or you can also be service if you’re in services, which a lot of our clients are. But so, it’s like the thing that you’re selling. You have place. So where does it fit in? For retail, it is like for sure location.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, 100%.
Morgan Hutcherson
But it’s like, different in B2B.
Sarah Roberts
Well, I would say a place in B2B is like the geographic location of sales reps is huge. So that’s one thing. Having the right data on where you’re serving customers is another thing. And then like from a marketing context, place would be like, do you have enough market research information to target specific geographic locations?
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. So, I guess it kind of overlaps. Yeah. Next is price. So is your product a reasonable price. Is it something that your ideal customer profile people would want to pay or is it too expensive? Is it too low that you’re just selling a whole bunch, which would be really nice if we could function in a world where prices are just always low?
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, that value comes in a lot. So, is it a price that reflects the utility and the value for customers? People don’t always realize that price is a marketing function. They think it’s a product function, which I guess it kind of is, except, in this situation, products and prices are technically different. Yeah, and under marketing,
Morgan Hutcherson
I always thought of it as a marketing function, probably just because like the economics underground meaning coming out. But like we talked about supply and demand so much that like it just became embedded in marketing for me.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You’re right. You’re right.
Morgan Hutcherson
And then the last one is promotion. So how are you promoting this product? Are you promoting through the right channels? And just a side note, advertising is not all of promotion like all of the promotion. It’s a very small percentage. Do you want to talk more about that?
Sarah Roberts
Yes. So, the promotion actually includes the sales initiatives, it includes advertising, it includes earned media, it includes like PR, I think news might be separate, that might be included in PR. But yeah, like promotion has a whole list of like four different things four plus different things that go into that. Advertising is one piece of that. So, when you say if you use marketing and advertising interchangeably, advertising is actually like 10% of 25% of all of marketing, like it is not all of it. And that is something that we bring to our clients, advertising might not actually be what you want to do for promotion. You might actually want to go the content marketing route. And those are two different things
Morgan Hutcherson
But it’s just such a buzzword. And I mean, we see ads so much that I think that we just associate it so easily because you’re like watching TV, so many ads, you’re not thinking about the other avenues to market.
Sarah Roberts
It is so readily available to us as examples. So yeah, it’s just the most visual thing, I guess the most available thing. But yeah, it’s only a piece of it. Okay, cool. Well, now that we’ve defined marketing with my crazy dream and the four P’s, we’re going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we’re going to talk about the different frameworks and we’re actually going to find some of these terms a little bit more and how you use them.
Sarah Roberts
Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed our break music. It’s so fun.
Morgan Hutcherson
We say that every time.
Sarah Roberts
I know because I want them to enjoy it.
Morgan Hutcherson
If you don’t enjoy it, just leave us a comment and we’ll change it.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, we will. See we’re responsive to the market, is what we are. Okay. Anyway, so we’re coming back and we’re talking about the different frameworks and defining those and actually giving you more meat on the bones for what is advertising, what is content marketing, where they used, sales, business development, what is the difference in answering all those questions. So first, we actually already talked about advertising as a piece of promotion, and that is really more about pushing people to act, pushing material in front of them.
It’s really all about the push efforts, which has a certain reaction to it. Just like if something is pushed into your face, you would have a certain reaction to it rather than you going to the thing that is different. That is the difference between advertising and content marketing. Content marketing is really where you’re pulling people in. So, I would say that’s the biggest difference between how clients who don’t necessarily know about marketing come just thinking it’s one thing advertising and then learning it’s the other, content marketing.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, and we have a lot of episodes from the season that dive into advertising and when to advertise versus when to do organic, yeah. So, I would encourage you to go check those out if you’re interested in advertising and you think that might be a good fit for you.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, absolutely. But let’s talk about the other side of this. So, we talked about marketing and sales alignment. Let’s talk about sales. So, in our industry, we see a lot of sales positions. We all see a lot of business development positions. First, I want to say sales gets a bad rap because of like the car salesman stigma, which if you know anything or are involved at all in B2B sales, you know, it’s a lot more about problem-solving than shoving solutions that people don’t actually want in front of people.
That is not effective, not a long-term solution, whereas anyone who’s successful in B2B sales knows it’s about knowing people and connecting them to the right opportunities and solutions and really more about solving their problems.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, and it’s because it’s such a recurring thing. Yeah, it’s not like you’re going to sell a car and you won’t see them again for like five or ten years. You know that they’re going to probably need that service later and you want to make sure that you have a good relationship. So, you’re the first call.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, and long-term sustainable success is built on long-term successful relationships. But anyway, so sales and business development are really similar in, like we’ve just said in the B2B space, Sales is really about building relationships. It’s not even that much about pushing quotas onto people. It’s more about, how can I build this relationship and how can I help them solve a problem that is sales. In this context, business development is definitely that under a different name, but also about building opportunities and building the right relationships and services in the market, I would say. Do you agree with that?
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. I mean, it all like is a domino effect. Like you start off with your marketing that’s going to get your sales up. That’s a really bad metaphor. Your marketing leads to your sales and your sales leads to you having business opportunities. Like if you’re going expand your business, if you’re going to offer a new service, if you’re going to even like acquire another company, like yeah, you have to have the money to do it. And that all comes from your sales and your sales part of it comes from your marketing.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, it all is connected basically, and it is very, very important to have them aligned and they lean on each other a lot from what I’ve seen. Like really effective sales leans on marketing. There’s your domino effect. Yeah, they’re leaning together. Maybe it’s like building like a card, we need to get away from the metaphor
Morgan Hutcherson
Every time we try to do a metaphor, it just goes weird.
Sarah Roberts
We have all these visuals and these, like, it looks like this, but I think it’s because marketing is kind of hard to define. And so are sales, but there is a difference between them.
Morgan Hutcherson
It’s hard to like, I guess like if you’re not doing marketing or you’re not really knowing how to track your marketing, it’s hard to see how marketing does play into sales. We need to do, like a whole short video about like MQLs and SQLs.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, that is such a good idea. So, stay tuned for that, audience. But on that same line. So, let’s talk about sales and marketing alignment, which you kind of alluded to, like how they lean together and how they depend on one another. So, I actually went to a recent event for energy marketers in Houston and a key focus for them going into 2024 was the marketing and sales alignment and making sure it’s working for the company. So, with that, I actually think that this is always something all sales and marketing teams have to work on in general. Like it’s just like your two pieces of a really big thing and you just always have to be working together. It’s just a constant problem you’re never going to actually solve and it’s going to go on autopilot. It’s always going to take effort, but I do like that They mentioned this is a specific initiative for energy marketing because I do think and I was talking to you about this before, that marketing I think, is bigger than it’s ever been in energy. So I’ve been working with clients on B2B marketing for energy for about three years now, and it really has changed a little bit. And I think I entered right when it was already changing too. So, I’m seeing kind of the tail end of change maybe, except it keeps changing with infinite changes and evolutions and things like that. But I really do think energy marketing is leaning, well, the energy industry, I should say, is leaning on marketing more than it has in the past.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, and I think a lot of things play a factor with that, but especially the industry is 20 years behind. Like that’s just kind of known. And think about it like what was happening 20 years ago at this point, the internet was getting big, and digital marketing was starting to get big. So, I think it kind of makes sense that now the energy industry is like, oh yeah, maybe we should start marketing.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. And if you look at how software as a service, SAS, legal services, insurance services, things that have genuinely probably been mostly B2B and using the traditional relationship-building tactics, they’ve leaned heavily in some digital marketing and content marketing too, so they kind of did it first. And now energy is kind of growing enough, especially with the energy transition, or if you’re at certain companies, the energy revolution, that change has made energy different, and new technologies are coming into the space. More innovation is needed and more innovation is needed and where more innovation is needed more businesses start and then they’re all talking to clients. Energy is not the standard status quo commodity it’s always been. There are different things coming into play with emerging fuels and stuff like that. So, I think with all that shift, it’s really opened up the opportunity for marketing and new innovative ways to market to a customer, which we already talked about, how that is much more than just advertising to the customer, to market to the customer has grown in that like space, it’s bigger now.
Morgan Hutcherson
Also, this is just a really side question, but kind of do you think the whole brain drain is also playing a factor in the energy marketing?
Sarah Roberts
Yes. So that obviously is a really big issue in the recruiting problem, which recruiting is a problem because there’s a messaging problem. And if there’s a messaging problem, there’s a marketing problem in energy space, probably because like I hate to say marketing was taken for granted before, but it kind of was because there wasn’t a lot of intentional effort into marketing like oil and natural gas.
Morgan Hutcherson
I think it was just unknown. People didn’t know how to navigate it. It’s a word-of-mouth business and it’s like, why do I need to post an article telling people about this when like I can just go talk to them and have a conversation?
Sarah Roberts
But now the general public is looking to energy, not just energy looking at energy itself.
It’s a generalized focus on the energy industry and there’s no real messaging around it. Like tech kind of has a message around it as an industry, right? It has like the innovative, the Silicon Valley, it has kind of a connotation around it. Energy now has a connotation around it because there hasn’t been an effort to have marketing and messaging around certain things and companies that maybe weren’t marketing because other channels were working, working, or maybe I shouldn’t say not marketing, I would say like not externally facing marketing maybe, or promoting themselves. Companies that didn’t do that weren’t putting out messaging and influential things on to the audience, to the general public so they couldn’t influence the general public opinion. So now it’s too late because like other people started giving that message to energy outside of that control. That’s also PR too a little bit of that.But that’s a whole that’s a whole thing with energy. But now I definitely see that space for marketing opening up and the need for it and the brain drain, which was your original question like that, is coming into it too. There’s a new workforce that does business differently. It’s all kind of compiling into like one big effect.
Morgan Hutcherson
So that being said, if you’re interested in getting marketing for your B2B business and you’re wanting to more information, feel free to reach out to us. Yeah, get a free consultation.
Sarah Roberts
And if you feel like something’s missing from your business plan and your sales plan, it might be marketing. Cool. I think that’s it. So be sure to subscribe. You won’t see us again in two weeks because this is the season finale. But subscribe. So, you get notifications when that new season starts back up. And then of course rate the podcast if you liked it, if you didn’t like it, you can also rate the podcast we are all that feedback here. So, tell us what you think. Tell us your comments, suggestions, topics, and ideas.
Morgan Hutcherson
Tell us if you didn’t like the music during the break.
Sarah Roberts
We do want to know that we do have options.
Morgan Hutcherson
We can switch it out very easily.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, we’re all about marketing for the people. Okay, guys, we will see y’all later. Thanks.
Morgan Hutcherson
Bye.
We’re excited to be bringing you this podcast produced by our company, ADV Marketing. ADV Marketing develops high-quality and cost-effective marketing materials for a wide range of businesses. Our relationship-driven business model and customized marketing solutions make us the perfect partner for small businesses looking to grow. I’m Sarah, Creative Director at ADV Marketing. Join me here with the rest of my team on Marketing Matters every other Monday to discuss business-to-business marketing topics. Now let’s get into the episode.
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the season finale of season four? I think it’s season four, yeah season four. Okay. Season four Finale of Marketing Matters, a podcast where we discuss all things marketing-related and how it applies to your business. I keep looking down to make sure I say that right, but I’m pretty sure I can say it by myself at this point, but I always get nervous.
Morgan Hutcherson
I think it’s because you have your notes.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah.
Morgan Hutcherson
Like any time, you do a presentation without notes, you’re, like, really confident, but when you do have your notes, you’re, like, so fixated on saying the right thing.
Sarah Roberts
Oh yeah. Like there’s pressure now because you have no reason to be wrong.
Anyway, I’m Sarah, and this is Morgan, and today we have a fun topic for the finale. We’re going to talk about the difference between advertising and marketing and sales and business development. So, this is a consistent theme throughout everything, every episode basically, that we talk about, because marketing and sales alignment is so important to us and for our clients just in the space that we’re in.
But we’ve never actually done an episode where we like, sat down and defined them all clearly. So, this is what that episode is, the final one.
Morgan Hutcherson
I feel like these are a lot of buzzwords that people hear that if you don’t know what they are, you’re just like, “That’s just like nonsense.”
Sarah Roberts
Yes. I also think it’s important because if you’re ever so if you’re an owner for business or a key leader in a business and you’re sitting around your big boardroom and you’re like, how do we get more clients?
That question is really big. So, you can say, we should do advertising. That means something totally different, then we should invest in marketing. So, knowing, knowing what’s available to you basically makes it easier to make good decisions going forward and then you know what to do to improve your business or improve your objectives or whatever you need to do.
So, we’re going to talk about those. First, I am going to give you my fun definition of marketing. This going to sound so funny, but it came to me in a dream, this visualization.
Morgan Hutcherson
Oh, it’s a visualization.
Sarah Roberts
I’m going to describe it.
Morgan Hutcherson
Oh, okay.
Sarah Roberts
So, also how nerdy of me to be dreaming about, like, what is marketing?
Morgan Hutcherson
Okay, no, this is a side note, but I have a lot of friends in marketing, and like, we’ve come together and realized that we dream about our work a lot and I think it’s the creative side of it. Like, it’s hard to turn it off, but like, I will have a dream about, like a Canva design that I want to do or something. And I’m just like, why? Why am I dreaming about, like, graphic design?
Sarah Roberts
Oh my gosh. I have dreams, that makes me feel not alone. I feel like I am understood because that is so real. Okay. Anyway, this came to me in one of my work dreams. And if I could describe marketing as like a visual, I would put like, like business and business development is like a big amorphous thing with the whole, marketing is like a piece or like, let me start over.
The market in general is this big thing. And there’s like, so, like, it’s really messed up. Remember, this is a dream, right? So, this visual is very meta.
Morgan Hutcherson
I’m thinking like the monster from Stranger Things.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Just like, maybe not monstrous. It’s not scary, but, like, it has no definition or whatever. Marketing comes in and makes it into a thing. Like, you’re understanding. You’re literally marketing.
Morgan Hutcherson
Oh my gosh. Like, you know, Oobleck. Have you heard of that? It’s when you take cornstarch and water and like, when you’re moving it, it’s like a solid.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, you’re like, giving it meaning. It’s a verb. Marketing is a verb. So, you’re like transforming into a thing that you can give to people. It is like, that is my definition and it is so all-encompassing and big and like, not just one thing. I think that’s why my dream was like, so abstract because it’s like it’s not just one thing. Yeah. Like all together to give you a better thing. Anyway, so that’s my dream. I think a better way to describe it is literally turning your product into something the market would want.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. Just what your customer or ideal customer would want.
Sarah Roberts
Very client-centric. You are understanding your client, meeting in the middle between product development and client getting.
Morgan Hutcherson
And I feel like that’s why people don’t really understand what marketing is, because they think, I just got to show that my business is so amazing that we do cool things and that we’re so smart and they don’t think about it appealing to the client.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. Self-promotion is not marketing.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. Think about it. Like, do you really want to listen to somebody who talks about how great they are all day? Or do you want to talk to somebody and have a conversation with them about the value they can give to you?
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, exactly. And that’s part of like forming this Morpheus thing into something concrete and valuable.
And you are giving them away.
Morgan Hutcherson
That is a good metaphor.
Sarah Roberts
I don’t. I don’t know. I feel like it’s very abstract, but, you know, I do dream about marketing, so maybe I’m just that kind of person. But anyway, there is actually a more concrete definition of marketing. It has to do with an acronym. I guess it’s an acronym is the four Ps of marketing. So. Morgan, describe what the four Ps are.
Morgan Hutcherson
Okay. The four P’s you got the product, which is like, what are you selling? Or you can also be service if you’re in services, which a lot of our clients are. But so, it’s like the thing that you’re selling. You have place. So where does it fit in? For retail, it is like for sure location.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, 100%.
Morgan Hutcherson
But it’s like, different in B2B.
Sarah Roberts
Well, I would say a place in B2B is like the geographic location of sales reps is huge. So that’s one thing. Having the right data on where you’re serving customers is another thing. And then like from a marketing context, place would be like, do you have enough market research information to target specific geographic locations?
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. So, I guess it kind of overlaps. Yeah. Next is price. So is your product a reasonable price. Is it something that your ideal customer profile people would want to pay or is it too expensive? Is it too low that you’re just selling a whole bunch, which would be really nice if we could function in a world where prices are just always low?
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, that value comes in a lot. So, is it a price that reflects the utility and the value for customers? People don’t always realize that price is a marketing function. They think it’s a product function, which I guess it kind of is, except, in this situation, products and prices are technically different. Yeah, and under marketing,
Morgan Hutcherson
I always thought of it as a marketing function, probably just because like the economics underground meaning coming out. But like we talked about supply and demand so much that like it just became embedded in marketing for me.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You’re right. You’re right.
Morgan Hutcherson
And then the last one is promotion. So how are you promoting this product? Are you promoting through the right channels? And just a side note, advertising is not all of promotion like all of the promotion. It’s a very small percentage. Do you want to talk more about that?
Sarah Roberts
Yes. So, the promotion actually includes the sales initiatives, it includes advertising, it includes earned media, it includes like PR, I think news might be separate, that might be included in PR. But yeah, like promotion has a whole list of like four different things four plus different things that go into that. Advertising is one piece of that. So, when you say if you use marketing and advertising interchangeably, advertising is actually like 10% of 25% of all of marketing, like it is not all of it. And that is something that we bring to our clients, advertising might not actually be what you want to do for promotion. You might actually want to go the content marketing route. And those are two different things
Morgan Hutcherson
But it’s just such a buzzword. And I mean, we see ads so much that I think that we just associate it so easily because you’re like watching TV, so many ads, you’re not thinking about the other avenues to market.
Sarah Roberts
It is so readily available to us as examples. So yeah, it’s just the most visual thing, I guess the most available thing. But yeah, it’s only a piece of it. Okay, cool. Well, now that we’ve defined marketing with my crazy dream and the four P’s, we’re going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we’re going to talk about the different frameworks and we’re actually going to find some of these terms a little bit more and how you use them.
Sarah Roberts
Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed our break music. It’s so fun.
Morgan Hutcherson
We say that every time.
Sarah Roberts
I know because I want them to enjoy it.
Morgan Hutcherson
If you don’t enjoy it, just leave us a comment and we’ll change it.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, we will. See we’re responsive to the market, is what we are. Okay. Anyway, so we’re coming back and we’re talking about the different frameworks and defining those and actually giving you more meat on the bones for what is advertising, what is content marketing, where they used, sales, business development, what is the difference in answering all those questions. So first, we actually already talked about advertising as a piece of promotion, and that is really more about pushing people to act, pushing material in front of them.
It’s really all about the push efforts, which has a certain reaction to it. Just like if something is pushed into your face, you would have a certain reaction to it rather than you going to the thing that is different. That is the difference between advertising and content marketing. Content marketing is really where you’re pulling people in. So, I would say that’s the biggest difference between how clients who don’t necessarily know about marketing come just thinking it’s one thing advertising and then learning it’s the other, content marketing.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, and we have a lot of episodes from the season that dive into advertising and when to advertise versus when to do organic, yeah. So, I would encourage you to go check those out if you’re interested in advertising and you think that might be a good fit for you.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, absolutely. But let’s talk about the other side of this. So, we talked about marketing and sales alignment. Let’s talk about sales. So, in our industry, we see a lot of sales positions. We all see a lot of business development positions. First, I want to say sales gets a bad rap because of like the car salesman stigma, which if you know anything or are involved at all in B2B sales, you know, it’s a lot more about problem-solving than shoving solutions that people don’t actually want in front of people.
That is not effective, not a long-term solution, whereas anyone who’s successful in B2B sales knows it’s about knowing people and connecting them to the right opportunities and solutions and really more about solving their problems.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, and it’s because it’s such a recurring thing. Yeah, it’s not like you’re going to sell a car and you won’t see them again for like five or ten years. You know that they’re going to probably need that service later and you want to make sure that you have a good relationship. So, you’re the first call.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, and long-term sustainable success is built on long-term successful relationships. But anyway, so sales and business development are really similar in, like we’ve just said in the B2B space, Sales is really about building relationships. It’s not even that much about pushing quotas onto people. It’s more about, how can I build this relationship and how can I help them solve a problem that is sales. In this context, business development is definitely that under a different name, but also about building opportunities and building the right relationships and services in the market, I would say. Do you agree with that?
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah. I mean, it all like is a domino effect. Like you start off with your marketing that’s going to get your sales up. That’s a really bad metaphor. Your marketing leads to your sales and your sales leads to you having business opportunities. Like if you’re going expand your business, if you’re going to offer a new service, if you’re going to even like acquire another company, like yeah, you have to have the money to do it. And that all comes from your sales and your sales part of it comes from your marketing.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah, it all is connected basically, and it is very, very important to have them aligned and they lean on each other a lot from what I’ve seen. Like really effective sales leans on marketing. There’s your domino effect. Yeah, they’re leaning together. Maybe it’s like building like a card, we need to get away from the metaphor
Morgan Hutcherson
Every time we try to do a metaphor, it just goes weird.
Sarah Roberts
We have all these visuals and these, like, it looks like this, but I think it’s because marketing is kind of hard to define. And so are sales, but there is a difference between them.
Morgan Hutcherson
It’s hard to like, I guess like if you’re not doing marketing or you’re not really knowing how to track your marketing, it’s hard to see how marketing does play into sales. We need to do, like a whole short video about like MQLs and SQLs.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, that is such a good idea. So, stay tuned for that, audience. But on that same line. So, let’s talk about sales and marketing alignment, which you kind of alluded to, like how they lean together and how they depend on one another. So, I actually went to a recent event for energy marketers in Houston and a key focus for them going into 2024 was the marketing and sales alignment and making sure it’s working for the company. So, with that, I actually think that this is always something all sales and marketing teams have to work on in general. Like it’s just like your two pieces of a really big thing and you just always have to be working together. It’s just a constant problem you’re never going to actually solve and it’s going to go on autopilot. It’s always going to take effort, but I do like that They mentioned this is a specific initiative for energy marketing because I do think and I was talking to you about this before, that marketing I think, is bigger than it’s ever been in energy. So I’ve been working with clients on B2B marketing for energy for about three years now, and it really has changed a little bit. And I think I entered right when it was already changing too. So, I’m seeing kind of the tail end of change maybe, except it keeps changing with infinite changes and evolutions and things like that. But I really do think energy marketing is leaning, well, the energy industry, I should say, is leaning on marketing more than it has in the past.
Morgan Hutcherson
Yeah, and I think a lot of things play a factor with that, but especially the industry is 20 years behind. Like that’s just kind of known. And think about it like what was happening 20 years ago at this point, the internet was getting big, and digital marketing was starting to get big. So, I think it kind of makes sense that now the energy industry is like, oh yeah, maybe we should start marketing.
Sarah Roberts
Yeah. And if you look at how software as a service, SAS, legal services, insurance services, things that have genuinely probably been mostly B2B and using the traditional relationship-building tactics, they’ve leaned heavily in some digital marketing and content marketing too, so they kind of did it first. And now energy is kind of growing enough, especially with the energy transition, or if you’re at certain companies, the energy revolution, that change has made energy different, and new technologies are coming into the space. More innovation is needed and more innovation is needed and where more innovation is needed more businesses start and then they’re all talking to clients. Energy is not the standard status quo commodity it’s always been. There are different things coming into play with emerging fuels and stuff like that. So, I think with all that shift, it’s really opened up the opportunity for marketing and new innovative ways to market to a customer, which we already talked about, how that is much more than just advertising to the customer, to market to the customer has grown in that like space, it’s bigger now.
Morgan Hutcherson
Also, this is just a really side question, but kind of do you think the whole brain drain is also playing a factor in the energy marketing?
Sarah Roberts
Yes. So that obviously is a really big issue in the recruiting problem, which recruiting is a problem because there’s a messaging problem. And if there’s a messaging problem, there’s a marketing problem in energy space, probably because like I hate to say marketing was taken for granted before, but it kind of was because there wasn’t a lot of intentional effort into marketing like oil and natural gas.
Morgan Hutcherson
I think it was just unknown. People didn’t know how to navigate it. It’s a word-of-mouth business and it’s like, why do I need to post an article telling people about this when like I can just go talk to them and have a conversation?
Sarah Roberts
But now the general public is looking to energy, not just energy looking at energy itself.
It’s a generalized focus on the energy industry and there’s no real messaging around it. Like tech kind of has a message around it as an industry, right? It has like the innovative, the Silicon Valley, it has kind of a connotation around it. Energy now has a connotation around it because there hasn’t been an effort to have marketing and messaging around certain things and companies that maybe weren’t marketing because other channels were working, working, or maybe I shouldn’t say not marketing, I would say like not externally facing marketing maybe, or promoting themselves. Companies that didn’t do that weren’t putting out messaging and influential things on to the audience, to the general public so they couldn’t influence the general public opinion. So now it’s too late because like other people started giving that message to energy outside of that control. That’s also PR too a little bit of that.But that’s a whole that’s a whole thing with energy. But now I definitely see that space for marketing opening up and the need for it and the brain drain, which was your original question like that, is coming into it too. There’s a new workforce that does business differently. It’s all kind of compiling into like one big effect.
Morgan Hutcherson
So that being said, if you’re interested in getting marketing for your B2B business and you’re wanting to more information, feel free to reach out to us. Yeah, get a free consultation.
Sarah Roberts
And if you feel like something’s missing from your business plan and your sales plan, it might be marketing. Cool. I think that’s it. So be sure to subscribe. You won’t see us again in two weeks because this is the season finale. But subscribe. So, you get notifications when that new season starts back up. And then of course rate the podcast if you liked it, if you didn’t like it, you can also rate the podcast we are all that feedback here. So, tell us what you think. Tell us your comments, suggestions, topics, and ideas.
Morgan Hutcherson
Tell us if you didn’t like the music during the break.
Sarah Roberts
We do want to know that we do have options.
Morgan Hutcherson
We can switch it out very easily.
Sarah Roberts
Yes, we’re all about marketing for the people. Okay, guys, we will see y’all later. Thanks.
Morgan Hutcherson
Bye.
