Marketing and branding are both excellent tools to make your business stand out. These two terms have a tendency to be used interchangeably but are different concepts and deliver separate goals. In the most basic terms, branding is who you are and marketing is the strategy used to build awareness of who you are.
When it comes to putting your business out there, knowing the difference between these two strategic concepts can help you boost specific campaigns for your business with branding goals or marketing goals.
What is Branding?
You need to focus on your branding before you can even think about putting a marketing strategy in place. Branding is your identity as a business – the brand defines your mission, your values, and what sets you apart from the crowd. This can be done through the use of your logo, your website, colour scheme, font weights, imagery, and brand guidelines.
What are your core values? What do you bring to the marketplace? How are you going to communicate this information to your target customers? Once you develop answers to these necessary questions, only then will it make sense to start thinking about a marketing strategy that will bring your brand to life.
Why Is Branding Important?
Creating the right brand is essential, especially as you build a reputation in a world where your brand competes with other brands for your consumers' attention. You can communicate who you are and what makes you a better choice than your competitors through branding.
What Is Marketing?
Marketing refers to the set of tools, processes, and strategies used to promote your product, service, and company. It is the set of actions taken to connect with your customers and how you get them to buy your products or services. It is essentially a means to deliver your brand's message and eventually sell products and services profitably.
What Does Marketing Do For Your Brand?
Regardless of which industry you are part of, there is a high chance that you are just one company in a sea of competitors. Marketing is the solution to attract attention to your brand and your services. It makes the customer aware of your products or services, engages them, and helps them to make purchasing decisions.
A marketing strategy is tactical and can be measured. At its core, marketing strategies such as SEO, content marketing, or advertising are used to drive results and the results that these strategies are trying to aim for have to do with sales.
The Relationship Between Branding And Marketing
Marketing is essentially how you attract your clients and branding is the way you keep your current clients. Branding takes a long-term approach through means of building brand recognition, driving positive brand sentiment, and promoting customer loyalty.
A strong brand will ultimately help to shape the marketing strategies that will promote your company and drive sales.
Contact CAYK Marketing today to learn more about the marketing plan that can bolster your business performance and set your company up for long-term success.
