The way consumers interact with brands has evolved massively over the years and advertising has had a huge role to play in the transformation of brand engagement. Starting from the good old signboards, newspapers, and fliers to snazzy commercials on TV, radio shows, films and now apps, advertising has enabled brands and businesses to convey the right message to the audience and boost sales.
At the same time, a common misconception that people have is that advertising is synonymous with marketing. While marketing identifies what consumers might like and encourages them to purchase a product, advertising helps in communicating a brand’s message to the consumers and promotes its products.
To that end, NeoPro Sales is helping businesses, embassies, and trade associations leverage unique advertising strategies, promote their brand message, and effectively draw a distinction between marketing and advertising. Established in 2021, the company was launched by Asheesh Bhimsaria, who has more than two decades of experience in sales and advertising. Right from selling space in yellow pages to FMCG products to credit cards, he has worked with brands belonging to diverse sectors.
Marketing vs advertising: why the difference matters
“In small and medium-sized enterprises, there is no clear demarcation between marketing and advertising. In most cases, they see marketing and advertising as synonymous and often don’t want to spend much on advertising,” explains Asheesh.
The confusion leads them to focus solely on sales. Even when they hire someone in the sales team, they often have unrealistic expectations of skyrocketing profits. “They forget that the market might not be ready for their brand and they do need to invest in advertising.” he adds.
Talking about how the job of an advertising professional differs from a traditional marketing role, Asheesh believes that ideally, a sales professional shouldn’t have to make clients aware of a brand. His/her job is to try to increase the number of orders placed by the client. “With aspiring brands, most sales professionals are also saddled with marketing. By the time he/she gets the client to trust a brand, businesses are already getting restless and wrongly blame the lack of sales on the professional,” he says.
While Asheesh understood the difference quite well given his extensive experience, it wasn’t the case with the rest of the industry. “One of the key challenges that I faced while building NeoPro Sales was to get people to take marketing seriously and to do away with the misconception that sales and marketing are synonymous,” says Asheesh.
Scaling ahead with a .in domain name
NeoPro Sales offers businesses an uninterrupted sales process that isn’t restricted by organisational changes or lapses. The team works to provide quality leads that are generated via structured cold calling and helps brands gain their clients’ attention efficiently.
As he set out to bring a new dimension and variety to the typical sales advertising job, a tool that helped him expand his company’s reach was a .in domain name for NeoPro Sales’ website. By opting for a .in extension, Asheesh was able to boost the company’s engagement with a targeted audience while getting clients to trust the team.
Delving into why he went with a .in domain name, Asheesh says, “The decision was driven by the fact that I wanted to clearly convey to my audience that NeoPro Sales was an Indian organisation. Having worked with a British company earlier, I knew the perception people have of upcoming or new businesses. When you are working with international clients, your website can offer them a peek into your brand ethos. And, I wanted the website to convey all that.”
NeoPro Sales is among the hundreds of businesses across the country that are leveraging the potential of a .in extension name to highlight their brand presence. The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) offers .in or .Bharat domain — which is India’s Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD). It’s among the few internet exchanges in the world to offer a ccTLD in multiple languages.
Deep-diving into the benefits of a .in extension, Asheesh says, “A .in extension is a great medium for any entrepreneur who wants to highlight his/her brand’s India connection.” He also said that the domain name enables upcoming enterprises to ramp up their reach and compete with bigger enterprises, without having to invest heavily in their business.
The ‘Shaping India Inc’s Online Growth’ series chronicles the journeys of startups and SMEs in India and how creating an online presence on the .in or .Bharat domain powered their success stories.
