Sales & Marketing, version 2.0

‘Sales and Marketing people’: more often than not, they’re lumped together like popcorn, and seen as fulfilling essentially the same role. We know that’s wrong – marketing is all about getting mindshare, and selling is all about getting the money. But given what’s happening online, this line is getting increasingly blurry.

We had recently examined behavioral targeting, and it’s clear that the options now available for B-to-C or B-to-B interactions are much more specific, configurable, and more importantly, profitable. With relevant ads showing up in the user’s browser windows, the gap between ‘marketing’ and ‘selling’ has the potential to narrow down to a fine sliver, indeed. When an ad appears on TV, consumers may not yet be ready to buy; when an ad tracks a consumer down on the Internet, based on his recent activity and behavior, he is already primed to hit the ‘add to basket’ button.

With Web 2.0 on everybody’s lips (and everybody’s marketing buzzword as well), companies that think ahead have already begun building online communities, carefully nurturing and encouraging customer ‘evangelists’ who can actually be much more effective at marketing than a huge ad campaign, per dollar spent. Or at least, that’s the assumption.

This ‘virtual sales force’ has enormous potential to create goodwill, interest, and actual purchase of your products/offerings. The sales and marketing angle here is, on the surface, related to the older definition: customer evangelists foster and spread mindshare, so calls that come in can then be handled by your sales team. But now your consumers are your marketers as well… Recognizing the possibilities with such marketing is all very well, but it’s also clear that this is far from being a sure thing. The Skype and Apple success stories may be the blips in the graph. Given the hit-or-miss angle, can this be the new paradigm?