People often use the words branding and marketing interchangeably; however, it’s certainly not the case. The end goal of both marketing and branding is the same: building and maintaining relationships with consumers to increase sales, revenue, and market share.
A marketing plan helps the companies to focus on the offered products and services, while branding focuses on the company’s image, reputation, and positioning. Keep reading to learn about how marketing differs from branding.
Marketing and Branding Explained
Branding
Companies globally offer services and products to meet people’s needs or solve social or personal problems. Hence the companies struggle to create a public image to differentiate themselves from the competitors to reach out to the targeted audience.
Branding is an end-to-end process to create the company’s perceptions for the customers by using visuals, logo design, color combinations, company stories, niches, taglines, and different fonts.
In simple words, branding helps companies define the pathway and develop a strategy to reach the vision based on the following:
- Mission
- Vision
- Principles
- Values
- Company culture
- Differentiator
- Message
Marketing
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear marketing? Of course, it’s the ads on TV, social media, and billboards. However, advertisement is a part of marketing.
Marketing is a combination of strategies, processes, and tools to create awareness of the company’s services and products using different media, such as:
- TV ads
- Print media
- Newsletter
- Distribution
Generally speaking, there are two types of marketing, such as:
- Business-to-consumer marketing (B2C) – As the name suggests, it’s the marketing strategy adopted to reach consumers, such as shampoo, TV, and other household items.
- Business-to-business marketing (B2B) – Companies sell services to other companies, such as raw materials, software products, etc.
Courtesy of the paradigm shift in technology, companies can now integrate different types of communication media to market their products, using digital, traditional, and relationship marketing.
Difference Between Marketing and Branding
From the above discussion, we can infer that companies must develop brand strategies before devising a marketing plan. The key to success is aligning the marketing strategy according to the company’s brand position, mission, vision, and objectives.
1. Process
Marketing is a hierarchical process that begins with the 5Cs, such as customers, competition, company, competition, and climate. Next, the companies segment the customers based on demographics and socio-economic classes to develop the marketing strategy.
Hence, marketing is a relatively logical and symmetrical process, while branding is more of a creative process. As a result, brand managers spend most of their time brainstorming out-of-the-box ideas to create and sustain the company’s image and message.
2. Underlying Question
Branding is all about understanding why customers would buy the offered product or services, while marketing revolves around delivering the message and grabbing the customer’s attention.
3. Long-term Vs. Short-term
Branding is a continuous process with a significant emphasis on the company’s long-term goals. However, the marketing plans are usually short-term and keep evolving based on sales trends and demand.
The companies work day and night to keep the marketing strategies according to cultural and social demands. It’s not necessary that the branding remains the same; instead, the companies adjust the brand with changing times. But the most important thing is that the branding must resonate with the company’s mission.
Marketing helps companies grab new and existing customers’ attention to spread awareness about the product. But, at the same time, the branding retains the customer’s attention.
4. Communication Strategy
The marketing uses different communication media, from offline to online, while the branding tells how to communicate and establish a long-term connection with customers. Therefore, most companies keep brand equity in view while designing integrated communication strategies.
Branding and Marketing: Final Thoughts
The key takeaway of the above guide is to understand that branding isn’t just about the logo and tagline, while marketing isn’t about the advertisement.
Creativity, analytics, and an in-depth understanding of the customers are the key ingredients of marketing and branding.
For marketing plans and strategies to be effective, companies should ensure a strong brand position. Branding allows companies to retain existing customers while marketing ensures quality product delivery to target customers.
Recent Comments