Marketing and selling are the terms used in the context of selling of goods to the customers by the company and often they both are used interchangeably by the majority of people whereas there are many differences between marketing and selling. Let’s look at some of the differences between marketing and selling –
Differences between Marketing and Selling
Start of Marketing and Selling
The first and foremost difference between marketing and selling is that while marketing starts before the production of goods done by the company whereas in the case of selling it starts only after the production of goods has taken place. Hence for example, if a mobile manufacturer has planned to introduce and produce new mobile having great battery life than the company will start marketing it in print media, social website, and other mediums when it is in production stage whereas company can sell those mobiles only when the production of mobiles has finished and not before that.
Focus
Another difference is that main focus of marketing is to satisfy the customer by offering the product which the customer wants and that too at reasonable price while the main focus of selling is to sell the product which is produced and at times it can lead to even selling those products which may not satisfy the customer properly leading to customer dissatisfaction.
Knowledge
While marketing needs to be handled by professionals having requisite qualification as it is a specialist job and also of strategic importance as far as the company is concerned whereas selling is more general in nature and it does not require any specialized knowledge, in short selling is more routine in nature as compared to marketing.
Nature
Marketing is continuous in nature in the sense that it does not stop while selling tends to stop once the whole production is sold, so for example if FMCG company has introduced new range of shampoos especially for women then selling exercise will stop once the whole produce of shampoos are sold to target customer whereas marketing will keep going on the for other products and company as a whole. Hence in simple words marketing never stops and it will keep going even when there is nothing to sell while selling stops the moment there is nothing left to sell by the company to its customers.
Broader concept
While marketing is a much broader concept and selling is one of the parts of the marketing while selling is a narrow concept and it is only a part of marketing.
As one can see from the above that marketing and selling are two different concepts and people should not use them interchangeably as there relevance and use are different as far as the company is concerned.