Every business owner knows that a good brand means more customers buying your products. But what is branding? You may assume it is just another term for marketing. Still, there are particular distinctions between the words that you need to be aware of to ensure that you maximize your profits by using them together effectively.
Suppose you invest money in marketing, for example. In that case, you want to make sure that people who encounter your business believe it deserves their hard-earned cash and isn’t just going to anyone selling an identical product. In other words, this is where branding comes in handy.
A huge part of branding means being consistent. So once your target audience hears about one fantastic experience they’ve had with your business, they will be quickly encouraged to pay attention to whatever else you have on offer as well.
Marketing and branding both play a huge part in establishing your brand as a business, but knowing the difference between the two is vital for making sure you’re successfully marketing your business.
Before we get into the differences between marketing and branding, let’s first agree on what they are.
What is Marketing?
Marketing is how you reach out to your customers and promote your business to them. Marketing helps you get people’s attention, communicate what you do, why they should care, and give them an easy way of making a purchase or getting in contact with you. You can promote your business by advertising it on social media sites, writing a blog post about it or filming videos that explain what you’re all about and where people can go to find your product.
The best type of marketing for someone new to this field is likely word of mouth(nowadays Influencer Marketing) because everyone knows that person, and their opinion will be more influential than anything else!
What is Branding?
Branding is more internalized than marketing. Nor are they independent of each other. Brands are more than their logos or slogans. Like how a logo is just one part of a brand, branding is a holistic process inclusive of internal and external communication efforts that aim to shape the company’s perception of the market. It includes defining who you are and what you offer, why you do it, and what makes you different from your competitors and communicating this information to customers effectively.
Certain aspects of internal culture also play into brandings, such as style guides and coding conventions. Your brand is the distinguishing mark that sets you apart from other organizations that serve the same need. And if done correctly, it builds trust with customers creating a positive image and recognition leading towards broader acceptance among people within its space.
Now we know what they are, let’s discuss the differences between Marketing and Branding. While marketing is used to promote your product or service, branding shapes your brand actively and who you are. It would be wisest if you had a strategy for both, and they have different goals and different results.
The purpose of marketing is not just to get someone’s attention but also to keep it as long as possible before moving on to something else of interest. Marketing strategies will come and go—but a successful brand builds loyalty that lasts forever!
To brand your business successfully, you first need an employer brand strategy that can help attract top employees, while branding strategies can help improve your business’s public image (this includes the way customers perceive you).
#1 Branding comes first, and marketing follows afterwards.
Branding comes long before marketing in the grand scheme of building your business. Suppose you haven’t designed your brand already. In that case, marketing may be premature if first impressions are important to you or some advantage to developing a positive impression about your company or products early on. You may not see sense in creating a brand before your marketing campaign starts, but it’s all done with good reason.
Before you focus on developing a marketing strategy for your product or service, you need to focus on identity. Who are you? What does your brand represent? And what values do you have as a company? It’s most important to know that how customers see and understand your business should never change.
After a brand is established and people know what to expect from your organization, you can start developing new approaches and habits that contribute to acquiring customers. But this only works if you already have a distinctive brand in place. Without one, however, a business’s marketing efforts should be centred around building a said reputation through customer service and living up to what the brand represents, rather than throwing out different gimmicky schemes or promotions here and there with little results.
#2 Marketing is the driving force of sales. Branding helps create unforgettable memories and drives loyalty.
At the core of most marketing strategies is to drive results and sales. However, branding takes a decidedly longer-term approach towards this end. Branding isn’t the first option anyone would recommend if you need an immediate boost in sales performance. But it is helpful when it comes to building strong brand recognition and branding loyalty which can pay off immensely in the long run and help build a solid foundation for your sales efforts in the future!
A great brand can deliver a fantastic return on investment generate higher sales and more passionate customers. Branding is designed to build equity over the long term by being consistent in quality of experience, while marketing is intended to drive immediate ROI by driving short term sales.
Marketing is essential for a business to succeed, but it can come and go quickly like a sprint does – whereas branding is more of an endurance exercise than a race. As the old saying goes, “It’s not about the first step. It’s about every step after that.”
#3 Marketing can get a customer’s attention, but branding is an experience that will keep it.
Marketing makes a potential customer see the need for your product or service, whereas branding will help make them understand why you’re the best option out there, and when the time comes, very few would want to look elsewhere.
In this day and age, when a variety of competition is strewn across markets in the form of businesses, creating awareness for your business takes more than simply opening the doors for customers to come to you. For one thing, it’s not just about getting their attention initially. Still, it’s about keeping the information relevant through ongoing communication and up-to-date product updates, among other things, so that your audience continues to pay attention to what you have to say on top of remembering who you are as well. And branding plays as an effective tool in highlighting a business’ individuality while still building its credibility!
So, you need to distinguish your brand from others and let people know it exists by leveraging effective marketing strategies to promote the business – but you also need branding elements to engage customers over a more extended period.
#4 Marketing strategies come and go, but persistent branding is forever.
While it’s true that you need to market your company and its products to bring more customers around to become familiar with your brand, marketing strategies are designed, at times, to be short-term. We call it a “coming up” when these marketing campaigns begin, leading up until the top of “peak”, of course! Then there is the rolling-off period where the campaigns die down or recede, as we like to say.
Branding is different. As a brand grows, evolves, and gets bigger, so should its branding. Sometimes you think you’ve got it nailed, but then something changes, and now you have to reshape your brand again to stay relevant. It’s an ongoing process – constantly changing as necessary – that allows your customers to see a bit more of who you are through the lens of branding.
In the digital age, marketing strategies come and go as they must. However, we’re reminded of how crucial branding is, especially in times like ours when it can define whether or not we’re successful for many years to come.
Final Thought on Branding versus Marketing
Branding isn’t a one-time event that you do at the start of establishing your business – it requires consistent effort! Your brand is the lifeblood of your organization. It is the personality that defines you and gets you to today.
For building an effective brand, there must be an authentic connection between your target market and what you do/sell, so it’s vital to utilize a planning process that allows cohesiveness in each of its steps. Your marketing strategy shouldn’t merely be about sales or profits because branding can dramatically impact those factors as well.
