Branding vs. Marketing

When you hear the word Branding, you picture a logo, a colour, a mood or even a person or memory. Marketing is all the efforts that go into finding a target market with the ultimate goal of profitable sales. It’s about how you build awareness.
So the debate is, which is more important?

Let’s have a look at our infographic which underlines the differences between Branding and Marketing.

Branding is all about how the customer perceives your brand and how they distinguish it from other products and services – this strategy is generally long-term. The aim of branding isn’t necessarily for ‘more sales’ but rather, more about how you are viewed and remembered by the consumer.

Obviously you want your branding to be positive. But you need to make sure that it is always aligned with what you deliver in terms quality and the product or service you offer.

Imagine a Chanel bag. You and I are already picturing the same bag:

When you see that, you’re thinking: luxury, quality, classic, Coco Chanel, elite and so on.

Now let’s remove the ‘branding’ and see what we have:

Frankly, it just becomes a black quilted leather bag. Would you pay $5600 USD for it? No. But you would for that classic Chanel bag! That’s the power of Branding.

So where does Marketing come in? Let’s say Chanel wanted to increase sales for Christmas, in time for gifting. What would it involve?

The Marketing Strategy will look something like this:

• Create a Christmas Promotion Campaign with the goals to make $XYZ profit
  • Detailed Marketing Plan with ROI measurements
• Christmas Campaign Target Audience
  • Segmented audience groups
    • Segmented by age, location, language, income level etc
  • ‘Christmas Promotion’ Advertisement Campaigns divided into different sub-campaigns to target specific audience segments
    • TV & Radio commercials for older demographics
    • Facebook advertisements for Gen X
    • Instagram advertisements for Millennials
  • Train customer service team so they appropriately pitch the bag as ‘the most memorable Christmas gift for the most important woman in your life’ or ‘treat yourself, you deserve it!’

Chanel has strong branding and is perceived by consumers as a positive and well-established brand. So much so, that even word of mouth is an effective advertising technique for them.

Can you now see that Branding is about how you are perceived whilst marketing gets people through the doors to make a purchase?

Now have a think.. which is more important? From our point of view – both are equally as important. You can’t do branding without marketing and vice versa.

Without branding you wouldn’t be able to price properly, drive new business or make a powerful impression on your customers. And without marketing you wouldn’t be able to advertise effectively or get any sales!

What are your thoughts?