If you wondered how exactly marketing and branding differ from each other, don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Although these two are connected, they are definitely not the same, and their differences are relevant.
Every business owner needs to completely understand marketing and branding. Why? Because only when you understand them, you can use them together to grow your business. Keep reading, and we will explain how branding and marketing differ.
Defining Branding
Simply put, branding is there to define who you, as a business, are. Marketing is there to help you build brand awareness. Your strategy is branding. Marketing is what gathers your business goals.
When you’re trying to determine the identity of your brand, you have to ask yourself some hard questions. These questions are not simple industry generalisations. They serve to help you decide who you want to be as a brand.
These questions are the best way to start building your branding strategy
- What made you decide to create your own business?
- Why are you looking to offer products to your audience?
- What are your business’ key values and principles?
- Explain your company’s mission statement?
- What are your brand’s main communication characteristics?
- How are you different?
- Does the internal culture of your company stand out?
- What signifies your professional style?
- What do you want people to think of when they hear the name of your brand?
- Which feelings do you want to be linked to your brand?
- How do you want your consumers to describe your brand?
Once you answer all of these, you will understand the main differences between marketing and branding.
Spend some time over these questions and provide elaborate answers. Once you do so, talk about them with your professional mentors and your colleagues.
All of these questions are directed inwards. They are directed at the internal culture of your business and its operations. What you build inside your company’s walls is what your business will emanate on the outside.
Your branding will encourage certain expectations people can have when using your services or products. If you clearly define who you, as a business, are, you can use your branding as a way to antecede and even underline your marketing strategy for the foreseeable future.
Defining Marketing
When we’re talking about branding vs marketing, marketing put in simple terms defines what you use to deliver your brand’s message.
Marketing of your company has to keep changing and adapting, just as your services and products do, over time. Marketing needs to be directed and created for your specific audience while maintaining your brand’s key values.
This is an exceptionally diverse field in the 21st century. Marketing can be funny, serious, or even heartfelt. When you talk about it, marketing can be any combination of videos, text, photos, keywords, charts, and graphs. There are many marketing channels and methods.
Most common marketing methods
- Social Media Marketing
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Content Marketing
- Pay-Per-Click
- Promotional Products
- Radio
- Television
Although these are the most popular methods in use, there are numerous others – online and off. So when you’re considering your own marketing campaign, make sure to take them all under advisement.
Marketing methods may alter. You can change them each year based on current trends and your audience. However, through all those changes, your brand won’t change.
Where to Start?
How to decide which is more relevant? It’s simple, really. Branding is the key to the creation of a good marketing strategy, so you must deal with it first. If you want to be a startup, same rules apply. You need to define clearly who you want to be before moving on to marketing. If you don’t have a clearly determined brand identity, you won’t be able to create a good marketing strategy, devise a tactic, determine proper marketing methods and tools.
Your brand is the very core of your business. A good brand is something consumers are sure to relate to. They will keep coming back when they connect with a brand, and if that brand delivers as much or more than they expected, that builds all important brand loyalty.
Take a moment and consider retailers and restaurants in your area – doesn’t matter if they’re big or small. If they’re successful, you’ll notice it’s their brand that makes people return to them. For instance, consider the place where you order prescriptions for yourself. Whether that pharmacy is a part of a bigger chain or privately owned, you have most probably been their customer for many years. And why? Because they have carefully built your trust and your loyalty. Now, even though you can buy the same prescription at any other pharmacy, you keep going back to them. It’s because of their branding, their core values that you like.
Same goes for any industry and any niche. Marketing trends, methods, and strategies change, new ideas pop up, but a brand identity once set, never changes. Your branding stays with your business as long as the business exists. Even if you make certain adjustments to address growth or changes in your offer, you shouldn’t change your brand’s values, core principles, or mission.
Your branding should include an ongoing commitment to always meet and exceed your target demographic needs. That can be a commitment to quality, convenience, communication, community, or any other that might interest your specific target audience.
Although this might sound simple, you should bear in mind that branding is something you and your team must work with on a daily basis. Each action your company takes should reflect your branding. That goes for every phone call, every order you process, every email you respond to.
So when we talk about marketing vs branding, the point is – marketing is how you draw the attention of your target audience, while branding is who you, as a business, are.
Marketing and Branding – Common Grounds
As you can see, marketing and branding are two completely different things. However, they do have a common ground and interact with each other to deliver the desired result.
When you’re choosing imagery that will be used for your business, marketing and branding become the same thing. When you’re choosing your company colours, logo, graphics, you need to remember this. That imagery will be both a representation of your brand and a significant part of your every marketing campaign.
Why You Should Know the Difference Between Branding and Marketing?
You understand the difference between marketing and branding now, but you still don’t know why it matters?
It matters because of your conversions. You can create a marketing strategy based on nothing but the most effective methods within your industry and the most popular current trends, but without branding, it won’t deliver as well as it could. Conversions are always higher when your consumers are connected to your brand when they recognise and trust it.
Your branding is the key to people’s hearts and minds. Your marketing can be engaging, and it might draw people in at first, but it’s your branding that will make them come back.
Nowadays, competition is overwhelming. Your competitors will offer similar services and products, or even the same as yours. However, if your branding is done right, you will have customer loyalty and trust, you will stand out from the crowd.
With no branding, you can still succeed; we’re not saying it’s impossible. But, with branding, you can build more.
You need strong foundations for a good building and good roots for a tree that will live for centuries. That’s why you need to understand the difference between branding and marketing. Use branding to create the foundation for your business to grow from, and marketing to help it expand.
Related content:
Brand Management Knowhow – learn more about branding with our collection of educational articles.
From promotional pens, coffee mugs, cotton tote bags, sports bottles and printed notebooks we are sure you will find the perfect products to help build your brand. If however, you require further information or have any specific questions, don’t hesitate to give a member of the experienced GoPromotional team a call on 0800 0148 970 or simply email us today.
