Below is a conversation I had with Fred Yee, President of ActiveConversion/FoundPages in regards to a question that I had posed to the Linkedin group. The Question Details are below, but the main question is in the title of this post.
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Me: I once had a colleague who told me he rather would have a 2 sales people rather than x amount for marketing. I had another colleague or vigorously defended marketing and branding as something that could not be ignored. It ended in a stalemate. Is it possible to have one without the other and still be realtively successful?

On 4/23/08 11:50 AM, Fred Yee wrote:
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Marc, I think I understand your question and although the ‘mix’ is important, and having all is important, I may have your answer if there is only one allowed.
Today I would say online marketing. You can do a lot with a website, search marketing and email marketing, which is low cost and bring leads in, so that even non-sales (owner, manager, admin and technician even) can engage to produce sales. It’s also why Google has 800,000 customers now…
Offline is good for branding and credibility but short on producing tangible sales. Sales people can close but they need leads and without decent marketing, it’s expensive sales.
Of course, there are situations and industries where online marketing doesn’t work that well or is outperformed by the others but in general I have noticed that it works well for most.

Links:
http://www.activeconversion.com

On 4/23/08 12:52 PM, Marc Meyer wrote:
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Fred, I would have to agree with you in that given all of the online productivity tools that are out there, the advent and rapid acceleration of user generated content and the ability to leveredge them at little or no cost, an inhouse team that consists of everyone from the folks in HR to the folks in IT, to the people down the hall in management, all have the opportunity to brand and market and create sales leads and marketing materials and opportunities. Which means that a collaborative effort and a sense of ownership can do more for growing a company selling a product than a single marketing department operating out of a vacuum, an autonomous sales force working without sales leads or a management team demanding results without a budget.

Thanks for responding to a great thread.

Marc, what can I say? Having been pained by this for over 15 years, I totally agree. Great minds must think alike! Fred.

Marc