Marketing is Not Sales

What's a Brand Gotta Do With it?

What is marketing? Well, I can tell you what it is not. Marketing is not sales. The best way I can describe what marketing is, it’s warming up the room to allow sales to be easier.

The confusion is that marketing can be sales for some products, some of the time. Performance marketing blurred that line. It made us believe every dollar should drive an immediate return, that every campaign should convert, that marketing’s job is to close.

The best marketing doesn’t force a decision, it makes the decision feel obvious. It builds familiarity before the first call, trust before the first demo, demand before the first outbound email. So when sales shows up, they’re not convincing, they’re confirming.

If your sales team feels like they’re pushing uphill, it’s rarely a sales problem. The room just isn’t warm yet.

Now, the obvious criticism here is that I’m helping myself to a juicy brand backstory that is completely made up and self-serving.

“What if your grandfather didn’t live in Saskatchewan, didn’t invent a shovel, hasn’t been in business for 40+ years… without that, you have no brand story, which the rest leans on pretty heavily.”

100% agree with that critique.

The point of this post was to show you that brand (although in this case fake) could influence a purchaser.

Now, if it were a real brand, yes, you would have to craft a story that is close to reality (some wiggle room may be acceptable). You definitely cannot say you’ve been around for 40+ years if you just started last year for instance.

But tell your story in a way that makes people care.

Most people buy emotionally and then justify logically.