Branding and marketing both share fundamental goals and often work together to accomplish them, but both have distinct roles and objectives. Knowing how branding and marketing differ as a business owner will make it easier to combine them so that you can increase sales and save time and money. Read more to learn how branding is different from marketing.
Prior to marketing, branding comes first. In order to effectively market a brand, you need to know who you are as a brand, what your brand offers to the marketplace, what your core values are, and how you communicate with your target audience.
What is branding?
Defining your brand is about defining your business identity. Your differentiation strategy is formed by your mission, your values, your tone of voice, and your personality. This can include all the elements that make customers identify with you, such as your logo, your website, the colours, the typography, etc. After you have defined your brand, marketing is about spreading the word. Anything you do for people to get to know about you is marketing.
What is marketing?
In marketing, you try to reach out to your key audiences to promote your products and services. Creating awareness about your business' offerings is a key element of any marketing strategy. An effective strategy connects your products with your customers.
The difference?
In essence, branding and marketing go hand in hand, but with different goals that yield different outcomes. The power of marketing is to bring customers to your business, and the power of branding is to keep them coming back to you. Sales are promoted by marketing, and brand recognition and loyalty are promoted by branding. As opposed to marketing, which needs to evolve constantly to avoid stagnation and to remain relevant, branding should be a long term strategy that is not often changed.
In conclusion
Ultimately, marketing and branding are both meant to increase the popularity of a brand to grow it. If you lack good marketing, your brand strategy will not be distributed or promoted properly. In the same way, marketing will not be effective unless your brand has a strong foundation.
More and more companies are offering similar products and services like yours, so the thing that differentiates you will be your understanding and use of branding and marketing. If you'd like to know more, please click here.