Branding vs Marketing: What's the Difference?

Branding and marketing are two terms that have generated significant confusion in the business world. Many individuals struggle to understand the differences between them, as their meanings have become intertwined and obscured over time. It's important to recognize that while these concepts often overlap, they each hold their own value and strength within a company's strategy.

To provide clarity on the distinction between branding and marketing, this article will thoroughly explore and delineate the unique aspects of each concept. By gaining a deeper understanding of these essential business principles, businesses can effectively utilize both marketing and branding strategies to drive success and growth.

What's the Difference Between Branding and Marketing?

Branding encompasses all activities aimed at defining a company's purpose, values, and long-term mission. It involves crafting a unique identity, with elements like logos and colors, that customers emotionally connect to and recognize instantly.

On the other hand, marketing takes this unique identity and leverages strategies, tools, and actions to promote and monetize a company's products or services.

• Branding focuses on:
• Defining why a company exists
• Establishing core values and mission
• Creating emotional connections with customers
• Marketing emphasizes:
• Promoting products or services
• Implementing strategies and tools
• Monetizing the company's identity

It is essential to know that branding serves as a precursor and driver for all marketing strategies. While marketing captures customers' attention, it is the brand's underlying values and connections that keep them coming back.

What is Branding?

Brand Equity

Branding is the process of creating a unique identity, experience, and emotional connection for a product or service. This identity helps customers differentiate one competitor from another. Brand equity is the boosted value a company's products receive thanks to a recognizable name. This equity is generated through both marketing actions (advertising, PR campaigns, social media) as well as consistency in delivering the brand experience. When done correctly, it will mean more customers buy more from you, recommend you, and less likely to leave you for the competition.

Keller Brand Equity Model

The Keller Brand Equity Model, also known as the Customer-Based Brand Equity Model (CBBE), provides a framework for measuring and building brand equity. Developed by marketing professor Kevin Keller, the model is based on the idea that creating positive thoughts, feelings, and perceptions towards a product or service is essential for building a strong brand.

The model follows a pyramid structure divided into four stages and six building blocks:

1. Brand Identity - Developing brand awareness and recognition. This stage aims to create a clear association between the brand and the specific product or service, as well as the customer needs it satisfies.
2. Brand Meaning - Building deeper understanding among consumers about what the brand stands for, its reliability, product quality, and customer service. This stage is subdivided into two blocks:
3. Brand performance - Ensuring that the product or service delivers on its promises and maintains consistent quality over time.
4. Brand imagery - Evoking desired emotions and psychological associations in consumers.
5. Brand Response - Assessing how well the product and brand experience live up to consumers' expectations, and the feelings they generate. This stage also consists of two blocks:
6. Judgments - Evaluating the factors that detract from the consumer's overall brand experience, including product quality, competitiveness, and credibility.
7. Feelings - Capturing the positive emotions and experiences of consumers who are satisfied with the brand promise, product performance, and customer service.
8. Brand Resonance - Achieving a deep bond and emotional connection between the brand and consumers, nurturing brand advocates who will remain loyal and actively promote the brand to others.

By addressing these stages and building blocks, companies can effectively develop and strengthen their brand equity, ensuring long-term success and customer loyalty.

What is Marketing?

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing focuses on attracting consumers through organic content creation. This type of marketing includes various "pull" strategies such as content marketing (blogs, videos, podcasts, eBooks), search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and events targeting an audience of buyer personas. The inbound marketing process follows a four-stage buyers journey: Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight.

Attract

The Attract stage is about making consumers aware of a company's existence, the needs it can satisfy, and the products or services it offers. Reaching the targeted audience organically often requires SEO-optimized content. At this stage, addressing consumers' pain points while positioning the product or service as the best solution is crucial.

Convert

After building a following and grabbing initial interest, the next step is to convert prospects into solid leads. Companies achieve this by exchanging a customer's contact information for more valuable content such as an exclusive eBook, whitepaper, webinar series, or a free consultation. Obtaining an email address or telephone number marks the start of lead generation.

Close

With a growing email list, it is time for companies to consider converting leads into sales. A common mistake is to try and sell the product immediately. Instead, incorporating CRM software, like Hubspot or Pardot, helps nurture the leads with relevant content and analyze which content resonates best with the audience.

Delight

The final stage of inbound marketing is delighting customers, which is an essential aspect of retaining them and generating new business opportunities. Ensuring customer satisfaction can be achieved by engaging with them on social media, providing relevant content, and continuously asking for feedback to improve product/service performance.

Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing includes more traditional forms of advertising such as TV ads, billboards, print media, commercial trade shows, cold calls, and unsolicited mass emailing. The primary difference between inbound and outbound marketing is that inbound focuses on consumers finding the brand, while outbound involves the brand initiating contact.

Outbound marketing is far from dead with modern digital marketing techniques like pay-per-click (PPC) and retargeting campaigns allowing advertisers to narrow down audience targeting by age, demographic, interests, and more. Platforms like Adwords enable companies to bid on specific keywords, and when searched, their website or product landing page appears on top.

In summary, both inbound and outbound marketing are important and can be highly effective when combined intelligently for a comprehensive marketing strategy.

Conclusion

In summary, branding focuses on crafting a company's long-term promise and unique story, while marketing aims to effectively reach and connect with target audiences who will benefit the most from that promise. Both concepts are essential for successful business growth, complementing each other in the pursuit of a strong brand identity.