Marketing and Business development are the most commonly used terms in B2B business firms. They both play an integral part in growing businesses. If managers know well how to leverage the strengths of marketing and business development, they can contribute to grow B2B businesses. There are ample opportunities to get a dynamic setting in businesses by utilizing efficiently marketing and business planning tactics. Both of them are highly important for a successful business.
In this blog, we shall try to understand business development versus marketing. So, let’s begin the comparison.
Difference based upon the definition:
Marketing:
Any action taken by a company to attract audience to its product or services through high quality promotion is marketing. Through marketing, a company aims to deliver impartial value to its customers which would strengthen brand loyalty that would lead to increased sales which will ultimately generate more revenues for the business.
Business development:
Business development can be defined as the set of ideas, initiatives and any type of activity which helps in making a successful business. Generating more revenues, growth in terms of business expansion, increasing profitability and taking some strategic business decisions are all included in business development.
Difference based on the focus:
The focus of business development is on business relationships and strategic partnerships. It means that business development emphasizes on the tasks and processes which will expand revenue opportunities while marketing focuses on target audience and communication. It covers every aspect in the journey of customer retention, from awareness to loyalty and the strategies that are deployed by the company to win the loyalty of its customers. In short, we can say that it’s primarily targeting scaling of the business.
Difference based on the roles:
Role of Marketing:
The role of marketing is to search the right customers or consumers for your product/service. This means marketing actually hits on the right audience who are in need of the company’s service or product.
Strategic marketing aims to communicate with customers, builds a strong relationship via urbane marketing plans which will ultimately make them to buy the product/service.
Some other roles played by marketing include:
• Identifying the needs of customers
• Develop various marketing strategies
• Showcasing ways to satisfy those needs
• Bringing innovations in packaging and product design
• Highlighting the unique value proposition
• Customer interaction
• Initial Customer satisfaction
The marketing team interacts with chief marketing officer, to make sure that their activities are helpful in overall business development.
Role of Business Development:
Business development plays a vital role in the growth and expansion of a business. It devices ways to increase the revenues by making strategic decisions and thereby giving a boost to the overall profitability of a business.
Mentioned below are few key areas in which business developments plays its role:
• Sales growth
• Business expansion
• Attend trade shows
• Strategic business partnerships
• Overall business profitability
• Evaluation of competitor developments
• New opportunities in the market or new markets
A business development manager reports to the CMO or business owner to make sure that the objectives and strategies designed aligns with the company’s goals.
Difference based upon the features:
The four P’s of Marketing:
The four P’s of marketing are
• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion
These are the 4 main elements which must be effectively united to foster and promote the unique value of a brand and helps it to stand out differently in the highly competitive market.
Features of brand development:
• Sales
• Marketing
• Strategic partnerships
• Business planning
• Product Management
• Cost savings
The above-mentioned features help a business developer to work on various areas in order to expand the business and bring in long term profits for the company. Since business development revolves around high level decision making, a business developer must carefully do the SWOT Analysis (Strengths, weakness, opportunity and threats). By doing such analysis, you are able to know current state of a business and compare it with the overall industry.
Why marketing and business development should work together?
Marketing and business development are indeed two distinctive business areas, but they have common goals when it comes to win the potential customers. It is very important that they must work together to bring the business a huge success. After all, when two departments work together, they can produce some cohesive strategies which both teams must stick to in order to retain the benefits. Marketing works as the primary influence of a company as it bridges the communication gap between consumers and the company while business developers can rely on the marketing team for brand messaging and overall marketing positioning. On the other hand, marketing team must reconcile and coordinate with the development team to improve the lead outcomes and planning strategies to carry on the business.
Final Verdict:
At the end, all we can say is marketing and business development are undoubtedly different departments as they perform different duties but both are highly critical for the success of a business. So, it is important that they both work side by side and coordinate with each other in various business matters.
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