Branding vs Marketing: What Are the Differences?

The combination of red and yellow in an image can make people hungry. This might explain why so many fast-food restaurants use them wherever and whenever possible. However, color is just one part of a broader marketing campaign or branding strategy.

Is the choice to use these colors a marketing tactic or meant for branding? Well, in some cases it can work for both. For red and yellow, specifically, they tend to lean more toward marketing.

Learning the differences between marketing and branding can make or break a small or medium-sized business's capacity to grow. If you want to learn more, consider reading ahead.

Branding vs Marketing

Branding and marketing are fundamental building blocks for almost any business venture. They share quite a few similar goals, like enticing, exciting, and engaging potential and current customers. However, they differ greatly in terms of overall strategy and approach. Here's a quick look at the basics of marketing and branding.

What is Marketing

Marketing is the combination of tools and strategies used to spread information on a product, service, or business. It's any and all methods you might use to reach a specific audience. The primary purpose, however, is to grab as much attention as possible to entice potential customers, re-engage current customers, and spread overall awareness.

What is Branding

Branding is a bit more complex than baseline marketing and requires long-term thinking. In practice, it's often intricately woven into a company's marketing strategy, but it requires a lot more work. Essentially, it's how you would define a company.

A brand is composed of a few key elements. These include the name, logo, website, and general style. Some businesses get creative and add other unique attributes, but these are the basics. The idea behind branding, or brand recognition, is to get users to relate a brand to good attributes.

You want buyers, or potential buyers, to see your logo, slogan, or company name, and correlate it to things like reliability, durability, high quality, and consistency. A bit more on this later.

Marketing Guide

So, marketing involves reaching out to potential and current customers to draw attention. If that attention turns into conversions or engagement is a different story, though. Here, what you want to do is stand out as much as reasonably possible.

Proper marketing requires a careful level of balance, though. It can drive sales by catching eyes, but if the product or service behind that marketing campaign is unstable, the result can be detrimental to a company's branding strategy.

While it might surprise some, the first step to a great marketing strategy is to narrow down your audience. Finding that niche group of people improves the likelihood that your ads will generate engagement. The internet makes this quite easy, as you can browse a plethora of websites to find where your audience exists.

Once you've found your audience and developed the methods you'll use to reach out to them, you have to put yourself in their shoes. Determine what they want, need, or don't like, and adjust your product or service accordingly; as you might see, marketing and branding often go hand-in-hand.

Marketing Tips

Building a powerful marketing strategy is no simple task. It requires a team of capable and creative minds that understand the target audience. Consider the following marketing tips for some guidance:

• Put yourself in your audience's shoes
• Stand out amongst the competition without stepping on toes
• Invest in the advertising sector where your audience most engages
• If you must outsource, make sure to at least collaborate
• Offer more than your competitors
• Use friendly language

Finally, remember that marketing is primarily a tool to drive sales and build an audience by attracting attention. It won't develop a relationship with your audience, but that's where branding comes into the picture.

Branding Guide

Branding is the foundation for everything else behind a company in most industries. There are some exceptions, especially when there's a monopoly. However, you need branding strategies to better engage and maintain a loyal audience; you want customers coming back because they trust your product or service.

The first steps to building your brand involve determining your company identity, product or service quality, core values, and how you want to engage a market. Your target customers should see your logo, company name, or slogan, and immediately relate them to a positive attribute.

Toyota is a perfect example of excellent branding. They don't offer luxury cars, per se. Rather, they offer reliable and durable vehicles. It's a company that understands its audience; its customers want a car that'll last for years with few to no issues.

Lamborghini, on the other hand, is the "millionaire's car." Its target audience is composed of individuals with more disposable income that aren't all that concerned with durability or reliability. Most of the time, their buyers want to show off their success and use a Lambo to do just that!

The differences between branding strategies can seem subtle, but they generate strong and easily identifiable attribute relations on the spot. A customer's immediate reaction to seeing a company's logo is determined by the branding strategy and their lived experience with the brand's products and services.

Branding Tips

Once you've planned out your company's identity, you can start working on a branding strategy. Take your time when developing a logo, choosing a name, and crafting a slogan. If you're struggling, consider the following tips:

• Choose and stick to one voice and style
• Engage consistently with your customers
• Build and maintain an online presence
• Maintain company composure during setbacks
• Make it easy for people to recognize your business
• Tell a story

When you're building up your brand, remember that it's all about creating a positive image. People should see your company in a positive light, and know that they'll get what they expect consistently.

Marketing and Branding: Keys to Success

The number of businesses that can survive without a marketing or branding strategy is scarce. Toilet paper companies, power companies, and water companies, rarely have to create a strong brand image or engage with strong marketing campaigns. However, most companies need to invest a lot in both.

It starts with building a brand. You need a logo, company name, and slogan. And, these have to have an immediate impact on existing customers. For marketing, the go-to is identifying your target audience and offering what they want.

Contrary to popular belief, they both require a lot of investment. It's difficult for organizations to reach success without spending a ton of time and capital on marketing and branding. Remember, it's not branding vs marketing, it's a healthy mix of both.

Get in touch if you're building a startup and want some help finding the marketing and brand strategy that will work for you. We'll guide you from start to finish!