Another topic that gets a lot of heat or attention is what is the difference between Branding and Marketing?
As a Marketing expert it’s easy for me to say they are different, but for you that is reading this blog you may be wondering why I say so, right?
Marketing for generations (but still poorly understood today, although I have tried to define this in our ‘What is Marketing’ blog) has been believed to be the process of engaging with a target audience to build strong relationships to make a sale or grow your customer base. Which I agree with, as part of the process.
But the point of this blog is to rather define or explain the difference between Branding and Marketing so let’s stick to the point.
So, if Marketing is what we described above, where does that leave branding and what is branding? I am sure most of you have heard the story of branding originating back to 2000BC where farmers would brand their cattle to depict ownership. So, this is where ‘branding’ originated and today continues to depict ownership.
Let’s look at some of the defined elements of branding which include:
- Your logo
- Your colour palette
- Your tagline
- Your tone of voice and vocabulary
- Your fonts
- Your Imagery
- Your positioning
Branding gives you the opportunity to differentiate yourself through your logo, colours, fonts etc. I like to think of branding as the visual and tangible elements we must work with that we too want to stamp on everything we do to claim ownership and build credibility (if it is done consistently).
So where does that leave Marketing? Marketing then would rather be the not so visible and perhaps somewhat intangible elements we create to differentiate ourselves from our competitors too. Let’s look at some of the key elements of Marketing:
- Your Unique Value Proposition
- Your target market or market segment
- Your product offering and pricing
- Your messaging
- Your channels to market
So, to sum up the question what the difference between Branding & Marketing is, branding is the visual and tangible elements and Marketing are the rather somewhat not visible and intangible elements instead. But don’t forget they can’t work in isolation and they need to work hand-in-hand because without a clear Marketing strategy you can’t and won’t have clear or relevant branding to support it.
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