The Difference Between Business Development and Marketing

While exhibiting at a small business conference I had the opportunity to chat with a business development professional who has also been tasked with marketing for their organization and wanted to know about the difference between business development and marketing.

Here’s my point of view: business development and marketing both have the same goal: grow sales, but they each have different approaches in how they achieve that goal.

Business Development is a relationship game while Marketing is a targeting and messaging game.

The approach for business development is about forming strategic partnerships, strategic relationships, and other strategic contacts within ideal target markets in order to bring in new customers.

The approach for marketing is about understanding the needs, problems and buying process of an ideal target customer, defining the real value of solutions and developing a marketing action plan to establish a business’s overall messaging, value proposition, customer journey, processes, and communication channels to keep and bring in new customers.

What do you think?