Selling vs. Marketing

Selling vs. Marketing: The Home Based Business Mess!

Have you taken the time to look at the Big Picture?

Too many home based business owners spend so much time getting lost in all the details that they never seem to figure out how to actually grow their business. Do you want to build a home based business empire? Then stay focused on the big picture, especially while working on all of the little details of your business.

What is the Big Picture?

The Big Picture is your Marketing Plan. Selling is just one piece of the bigger picture. Selling could be actually talking to a prospect or it could be a sales letter making that communication for you. Either way it is just one of the tools that you use in your marketing arsenal.

Selling should not be your primary focus.

"What? Are you crazy, Jeff? I'm in business to make money. How am I supposed to do that without selling?"

I didn't say not to use selling. I just said you should use selling to help you execute your marketing plan. Most home based business owners think marketing and selling are the same thing. That kind of thinking will limit your ability to grow your business.

Let's take a step back here and first define just what marketing is…

MARKETING is getting the right MESSAGE about your product or service to the right TARGET NICHE (or audience) through the right MEDIA.

From this definition you can begin to build your Big Picture Marketing Plan. Follow this simple definition of marketing and you will find success. Forget what marketing really means and you will struggle.

Warning: Don't get lost in the details as you drill down into this definition of marketing. The biggest place I see home based business owners having trouble with this is when they start to drill down on the media piece. The Internet is a perfect example.

A lot of home based business owners think they are in Internet Marketing Business. Not true. The Internet is just a media to be used to reach your customers. Is it the right media? That depends on your business. But when you get lost in the details of the Internet, and it's easy to do, you lose sight of why you're in business in the first place… to serve your customers.

There are so many technical details involved with "doing business on the Internet" (ie, using the Internet as a media to reach you prospects or customers) that most home business owners forget what happened with the dot com bust.

Don't remember why the dot com went bust? It's because they spent way too much money on technology for technology sake. They didn't ask the question "does this technology help us deliver our message to our target audience via the right media?" They didn't even ask "does this technology help us serve our customers better?"

They got lost in the details of technology. They spent money on stuff because they thought it was cool. They put the media before the Marketing Plan.

Don't let this happen in your business.

So who wins? Marketing wins every time. Selling helps you with the message but selling is just one piece of the puzzle. Once you've figured out what your Big Picture Marketing Plan is then take action on all the details that will help you achieve your goal.

Never lose site of how you are going to build your home business empire…

By getting the right MESSAGE to the right TARGETED NICHE via the right MEDIA.