What’s the difference between Branding and Marketing (and which is more important?)
At first blush, it’s easy to think the difference between branding and marketing is pretty negligible. But I’m here to tell you that couldn’t be further from the truth.
There is a world of difference between branding and marketing, so let’s dive right into what some of those big differences are.
Branding is for you, marketing is for your customers
One of the reasons I love to talk about branding is because it revolves around who the company is and what they are trying to accomplish in the world.
Branding is about ensuring everything you do and say is clear and consistent across every platform you’ve chosen to show up.
A strong brand position will also help unify your team so everyone on the boat is rowing in the same direction.
Marketing, on the other hand, is simply communicating that brand and what you offer to everyone who listens to you. When marketing, you’ll often put efforts behind attempting to increase your customer base so your company grows.
Branding is long-term, marketing is short term
How do you want your company to be viewed in one year? Five years? Ten years? That is branding. Branding is about the long game, ensuring that your company is making a difference years from now and that your customers know who you come to when they are experiencing the problem you solve.
When it comes to marketing, it’s all about the here and now. Attempting to hit specific numbers within the next week or month. Sure that could extend to your sales goal over the next year, but if you don’t hit today’s goal, you’ll be hard-pressed to hit the year's goal.
Branding creates relationships, marketing drives transactions
The whole point of branding your business is to connect with a specific audience. Another part of branding is also to say who you aren’t for. If you are selling shirts to football fans, it’s pretty clear you aren’t selling shirts to futbol fans.
Clearly identifying who you are and aren’t for enables those who want to do business with you to more easily connect. They’ll know you can help them in that specific area, and so they’ll want to stay in touch so you can be their go-to person.
Social media ads, cold calls, direct mail, all of these, and other marketing tactics are meant to drive a potential customer to do business with you.
When marketing you want to incur a sale, not start a relationship.
Ultimately, effective branding has a soft metric of whether or not you are connecting to your audience. Effective marketing had a hard metric of sales made.
What’s the best way to make sure your marketing is effective? In my opinion, it’s having a solid brand that enables you to speak clearly and consistently to those you are trying to reach.
Which is more important? It’s a bit of a trick question because you need both! Branding will create a depth of relationship with your customers, marketing creates a width of customers to help your business continue growing.
Do you have thoughts on which is more important? I’d love to hear it!
