Sometimes, not always, there is confusion around branding and marketing. You may ask yourself: What is marketing? What is branding? Do they differ? For businesses, branding and marketing are important aspects for maintaining stability and growth. More than often the two and their differences are misinterpreted not only by the company but even their marketing team. To break it into the simplest forms, let’s review what each term means shall we?
Branding
To really understand what branding means, first we must know what is a ‘brand’. When people talk about brands generally they will say “well… my logo is my brand”. And they’re right, a brand is a unique name, idea or image of a specific product or service that consumers connect with when choosing a product/service over the competition. But really, it is more than that. Companies often forget that there are a variety of different elements of what a brand is. There is the emotional and psychological elements of your brand that a consumer makes with your product or service. We all know that a product or service can be copied by anyone, it happens daily. However, it’s the brand that remains unique to the consumers.
Branding is the strategy to create that unique image. That ‘gut-feeling’ a consumer gets when deciding which 1 of the 20 exact same products/services they are going to move forward with. Seems simple, right? In simple words a product/service is what you sell, a brand is the perceived image of what you sell and branding…branding is the strategy to create that unique connection.
Once you have created the brand image, it’s time to communicate that message to the masses. So how do you do that…
Marketing
There are many different definitions of marketing, in a nutshell ‘marketing’ is the action of promoting a businesses product or services and communicating that message to consumers. Marketing is storytelling it can be funny, educational, heartfelt or serious. It is geared directly to your target audience while supporting the core values of your brand. You can market your message with a variety of methods:
- Search Engine Marketing
- Pay Per Click Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Television
- Radio
- Digital Marketing
There are many online and offline methods of marketing to consider when preparing your marketing campaign.
Now you know the difference or hopefully have a better understanding of the important elements
