Branding and marketing are two words that have a totally different meaning. However, they are connected in many ways that they resemble one another.
There are slight differences between those two. And as a business owner, you need to understand how branding and marketing can go in great length of detail, and how you can manage both to utilize the best out of them.
Many companies, big and small, don't understand the important differences between branding and marketing. The difference between the two, is not just misunderstood by businesses, but also by their own marketing departments.
So what makes the two different, and why many businesses misunderstood them?
Questioning Your Brand
Branding, in short, is a "promise". Businesses can make a promise to their customers with everything they do, and to be successful, they need to deliver their promise every single time. The idea here is that a brand is a business badge, a name, a character, or a fraction of what you do.
Branding describes who you are, what your business does, and how you build awareness. Branding is your strategy, and marketing describes you goals. In order to know your brand you need to ask yourself several questions that go beyond what you do in general.
- What are your core principles?
- What is your mission?
- What inspired you?
- Why are your offers?
- What makes you unique?
- What is your internal business culture?
- What is your professional sense of style?
- What is the character of your communication?
- How do you define your values?
- How do you want to be heard?
- How do you want people to think and feel?
- How do you want people to describe you?
Answering the above questions will help you understand the difference between branding and marketing. All of the questions are related to your internal operations and your internal culture. Therefore, what you build on the inside, is what will emanate externally.
Your branding will cultivate what your consumers can expect of you, and what they will experience when they utilize your products or services. By clearly defining who you are, your branding can then be utilized to precede and underlie your marketing efforts—both today and for years to come.
Related: Marketing By Answering "Why" To Get Your Brand Noticed
Answering Your Marketing
Marketing is defined as the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. It's an integral part of your brand, and one should never goes without another.
When a brand gives a promise, marketing is the way to answer it. Marketing should be based on your brand's positioning, personality, values, character, and others. All that has been defined by your business visions and missions.
In short, marketing is what you do to get your promise delivered, while your brand is how you keep that promise.
Marketing will continually change and evolve, just as the products and services you offer. Marketing will be directly and specifically geared towards sectors of your target audience, all while supporting the core values of your brand. Because of that, marketing is vast and wide.
To put it into details, marketing can be a mix of everything that comes up in mind. From text, photos, charts, graphs, videos and others.
Marketing has a medium in which it shall travel. On the internet, marketing methods include, and not limited to: SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, PPC Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Television, Radio, Print Campaigns, etc..
Branding vs. Marketing
Marketing may contribute to your brand, but your brand is bigger than any of your particular marketing effort.
Marketing is a process. When it starts, on progress, and finishes, your brand is what remains. Your brand is what will be in others' minds, while your marketing efforts is your brand associated with your products and/or services.
After marketing swept through, your brand is what ultimately determines your success in getting loyal customers. If a salesman is able to sell you an Apple's iPhone or a Google's Android phone, this is a marketing success. But if the salesman is able to make you use that particular brand for your future products, without the salesman role in persuading you once more, this is a brand's success.
What makes you loyal to a brand is essentially because of experience, and the brand's promise of reliability.
Branding is at the core of your marketing strategy, so branding must come first. Even if you are a startup of a small company, it's essential to clearly define who you are as a brand before doing any marketing methods. It's your brand that keeps people coming back to you.
Your branding includes attributes such as a high commitment to quality, community, convenience, communication and an ongoing commitment to a specific need.
The Differences Working Together
Despite branding and marketing have a whole different meaning, the two can overlap each other to give one single meaning.
When selecting imagery to be utilize on an ongoing basis, for example, branding and marketing become one in the same. When you're choosing a new color theme and design for your company and for its website in order to create a brand. The logo, graphics, web design, and others, will play a role in your future marketing campaign.
Read: Design Beyond Branding
Brand creates a timeless connection. As the competition is fierce, marketing is also a continuous effort that must be timeless to create a character on its own.
Without branding you may achieve success, but with branding your success will be far more substantial. All strong business must have a solid starting point and foundation, and understanding the difference, and the similarities between branding and marketing will allow you to build your foundation of branding and your extensions with marketing.
Further reading: Business Brand Marketing Strategy