In an article for the Wall Street Journal, Jessica Livingston says that startups should do sales not marketing. She clarifies this by stating that sales and marketing are two opposite ends of a spectrum. She says sales are narrow and deep where as marketing is wide and shallow. It makes a lot of sense, but I’ve never thought about it like that. As a startup you don’t want to reach a large audience to try and get a five percent response rate. You want to talk to your core customer and your early adopters and get deep in their head about what they thing of your concept. Marketing works best for established companies that know exactly what their product or service is and have a pretty good idea about their target markets. Startups are searching for their target markets and then discovering exactly what they want in the product. You can’t do that with a wide, shallow sweep. You can’t get the negative feedback you get one to one through mass marketing.
It is a very interesting article if you want to read it. It’s in the accelerators section of the Wall Street Journal and you don’t need a subscription to read it interestingly enough. http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2014/06/03/jessica-livingston-why-startups-need-to-focus-on-sales-not-marketing/
BoweryJE22
very good point. marketing can only do so much, but it’s the sales that make the business go. If they could do it perfectly it would be both, but startups should focus on one.
Great post, i think a mix of both is necessary