Branding Vs. Marketing: The Difference Between The Two

Whether you’re just starting out in business or you’ve been thriving for a few years, you’ve probably heard quite a lot about marketing and branding. These two buzzwords float around business a lot, but what do they actually mean?

For people not in the know, the two may seem interchangeable, but they are not. Branding and marketing are two different methods of helping your business to grow sustainably and include different techniques.

In this blog post, we’re going to be taking a look at the definitions of the two, the difference between the two, and how branding can help your business and your business’s marketing. To learn more, keep reading now.

What Is Branding?

In marketing, branding refers to the process of building a strong identity that can be associated with your brand. The idea is to create a positive perception of the company and use everything from the logo, mission statement, and even brand colours to do so.

It creates the identity that customers and clients come to expect from your company. This identity is useful in ensuring that clients recognise your brand, understand its value to them, and keep coming back to the brand to meet their needs.

Creating a brand identity is one of the easiest ways you can build a loyal customer base that associates your identity with the quality of your services or products. Brand identity is incredibly important to business and creating one could help you to grow within your industry.

What Is Marketing?

Marketing is the range of different activities that a business or marketing company undertakes to promote a company’s business, services, products, and anything else they would like clients’ to be interested in.

Marketing encompasses a great many methods including visual marketing techniques like adverts, posters, and leaflets, as well as digital marketing, social media promotion, and email marketing.

Branding can become a part of the marketing your company does, and a strong brand identity certainly makes marketing easy to curate, but the two are different at their root. To find out more about their differences, check out the next section.

The Difference Between Branding And Marketing

Branding and marketing have some crossovers in terms of methods and goals, but they are fundamentally different techniques. While branding shapes and cultivates your company’s reputation and image, marketing promotes it. Below, we’ve summarised a few of the key differences between the two:

• Marketing is the way that a company draws in customers. It is about getting the attention of potential new clients and enticing them to your website and services. Once you have them on your site, the branding is what keeps them there.
• Where marketing is intended to drive sales and help you to make money, branding is used to build recognition of your brand and promote trust and loyalty within your consumer base.
• Branding is needed for good marketing. Branding makes your company recognisable and gives something for people to associate with your brand. This is required for good marketing, and as such, branding is required before marketing can begin.

How Does Branding Help Your Business?

So, why does your business need good branding?

If branding comes before marketing, it is quite an essential part of your company’s marketing. It is important to build a good brand identity to ensure that your brand is recognisable and has a good reputation. But how does this actually help your business?

Being recognisable means that even if a client sees your logo for a fleeting moment, they’re likely to remember it. While they may not require your services at that moment, if you’re memorable, they will come back to you when they do need you.

And once you’re recognisable, you can be trusted too. Trust inspires loyal customers who continue to come back to your brand again and again. It could even inspire them to tell their friends and family about you, recommend your company, and help you to expand.

As we’ve discussed, branding and marketing overlap in the sense that good branding makes marketing easier. With a strong brand identity, marketing becomes easier and better. It pushes your marketing to the next level and makes your marketing recognisable too.

Good brand promotion is thought to be a good way of ensuring future business, but on top of that, it is thought to inspire your employees too. It gives people a mission to work towards and an identity to assume when they are working.

All in all, good branding can boost the reputation and standing of your business to ensure future business, future revenue, and longevity.

Conclusion: The Difference Between Branding And Marketing

Branding and marketing are different techniques but both are designed to improve your reputation, increase your customer number, improve customer loyalty, and ensure the sustainability of your business.

They are important to building a successful business and you will need to work on a strategy for both as part of your plans for your business. 

If you’re looking into branding and marketing for your company or business, you may be wondering if you can do it yourself. We recommend seeking out marketing professionals to build your promotion. Why not get in contact with our marketing team today to find out what we could do for you and your business.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does branding mean in marketing?

Branding in marketing refers to the ways in which your business is recognisable. It can relate to everything from your brand colours, logo, and font style to your mission statement, email format and tone, and social media activity. It is what makes your brand known, recognised, and trusted by your customer base.

What does branding do for a business?

Branding is an effective tool for your business because it helps your customers to recognise and remember you. By being memorable, you are able to ensure customers will come back to your brand when they require your services or your products.

Does branding come under marketing?

Branding and marketing are two different things but branding does inform marketing. Your brand helps to direct your marketing and make it recognisable to your customer base. It also helps to build trust and loyalty as people associate your identity with quality.