76. Marketing vs. Branding. What's the Difference?

If you've ever found yourself confused about the difference between branding and marketing, you're not alone. While these terms may seem similar, they actually have totally different meanings and purposes in your business and most importantly in how they help make your business money.

On this episode of the High Performance Marketing Podcast I'll identify the difference between the two so you can leverage both to their fullest potential, increase revenue and make the most out of every dollar you invest in each.

Transcript

Welcome to The High Performance Marketing Podcast, a show focused on helping entrepreneurs and small business owners connect with their ideal customers using simple marketing and quality content. I'm your Marketing Guide, Ali Garbero.

What if I told you that something that’s costing you money is the confusion between marketing and branding. 

For some reason, somewhere in the realm of insider language, branding and marketing became two terms that are often used interchangeably. But branding and marketing are two completely different things and more importantly they have very different purposes in business.

On today’s episode of the podcast I’ll dive into what Branding is, what Marketing is and how they make your business money so that you make sure to enlist your marketing dollars on what will get you the quickest return on your investment.

Let’s begin with branding.

First, I don’t blame you if  you’re confused on the difference between branding and marketing and if you’ve focused more on branding. The reason entrepreneurs and business owners start with branding - is because when we’re first getting our businesses off the ground, we know we need a digital and online presence, so we create a website so that people can find us. 

Which means we turn to the branding and design elements that include all the fun like picking pretty fonts and fun colors or designing a logo. 

Branding: The Heart and Soul of Your Business

At its core, branding represents the personality and identity of your company.  So let’s talk about that first. 

Branding encompasses the values, mission, unique character, and overall the perception that clients and potential customers associate with your business. Now, what do I mean by this? How do we put this into context with real life examples?

Well, all successful businesses have a core personality that makes up the soul of the brand. For example, at Dyson, it's efficiency. At Disney, it's magic. If I were to mention Dwayne the Rock Johnson, you would say it’s hard work and hustle, right? 

During my brand messaging workshops one of the questions I always like to ask near the end of the workshops to help with this question is “if your brand was a celebrity, who would it be?” For some reason that question seems to help spark ideas around your brand's core personality and values.

Now before you write this off as fluff like “Ali, c’mon what does this have to do with me making more money, selling, more of my services?” 

Well, what if I told you that 75% of consumers buy from brands that share the same values? And think about the brands you align with and give your money too? Most likely it’s because there’s something they’ve done within their branding to communicate and signal to you what matters most to them.

I know I love Cotopaxi, which is an outdoor gear company because of their Gear for Good campaign, which says: Our Gear for Good® promise is to make durable gear as ethically and sustainably as possible, and to use our company as a way to support communities in need. 

That’s branding - that’s how I feel not only about the company, but how I feel as their customer. 

So this is why defining your brand personality is important because you’ll need it so that you can build a brand identity that later seamlessly connects with marketing activities like your future campaigns, and more importantly so that you can connect with customers on a deeper, more personal level. 

I hope that what you’re understanding here is that branding goes beyond logos and color schemes; it really works to encapsulate the emotional connection between a company and its audience of potential customers. 

You know I like to beat concepts like a dead horse sometimes so I don’t mean to sound repetitive, just that I want to drive this branding idea home. Again, because I want to be sure you forever understand the difference between branding and marketing. So one more note on branding.

When you think about a well-established brand, again, you’ll usually feel certain things about that brand, like trust, reliability, and quality that come with it. 

Feelings of confidence, trust, and superiority is most likely why someone might buy Tide laundry soap at the store instead of Costco’s Kirkland brand. 

One, feels generic and empty, whereas Tide is an award-winning household name that has proven to be the best and most trusted remover of stains. Now Tide didn’t accomplish this feat overnight. It took them years and hundreds of thousands spent on advertising to build good word of mouth.

When branding is done well - branding works to position you as a leader as well as different from your competition.  Branding also works to create loyalty with your business so that customers become repeat buyers and brand advocates, [spreading positive word-of-mouth.]

Ultimately, what I hope you’ll remember is that branding communicates what your business stands for, which helps attract the right target audience and build long-term relationships.

Next let’s talk about marketing. I’m going to say something radical that I know you’re going to think is biased, but I hope you know me well enough by now to know, I’d never do that to you. But my statement is: Marketing is more important than branding. Why? Because Marketing is the engine that gives branding horsepower. 

You  just learned that branding is how you make people feel with colors, designs, and mood boards - marketing is when and how you actually tell people to buy your product or services and marketing is also how you explain why they should.

So Marketing allows you to explain what you offer in a way that makes people want to buy it. Marketing also serves as a communication bridge. But it’s not throwing spaghetti at the wall, marketing is strategic. It’s a planned way of promoting your business to your target audience. It’s why I say if you don’t have a marketing strategy or plan in place, you’re kind of just throwing your money away hoping something you say or do sticks.

Marketing involves various activities and strategies like paid advertising, PR, social media marketing campaigns, email marketing, website landing pages and sales funnels. 

Marketing is how you walk alongside your customers and potential prospects during their buying journey of “I’ve never heard of you” - to actually signing on the dotted line and buying.

And the best part of it all - the part I know you want to hear, is that marketing’s primary goal is to drive sales, increase brand visibility, and generate leads. Let me say that again —--marketing’s purpose is to drive sales, increase your brand and company’s visibility in the marketplace and generate leads. 

So this is why when I hear clients tell me they need to cut back on marketing due to a recession or budgets, I cringe because I’m like “but wait, marketing is how you’re going to make more money in your business!”

How does marketing help you do this? 

Marketing increases sales and attracts new leads by communicating with customers and potential clients using marketing activities like: 

• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Printed newsletters, magazines, or brochures.
• Content marketing - which is creating content that answers the questions or objections of your target customer like Blogs.
• Websites and landing pages
• Free resources like white papers, digital brochures. Pretty much give people stuff they want, that they will exchange an email address with you for.

Marketing helps you deliver valuable information to your ideal customer on a consistent basis so you stay top of mind, relevant, and so they don’t forget you when they need you the most. 

Also because marketing relies heavily on data and analytics, it helps you directly understand consumer behavior and preferences. 

For example by looking at email marketing analytics, you can quickly see who’s opening your emails, who’s not, what email topics are hitting home with your emails and whether or not people are clicking on your offers. Data shows you who’s visiting your website, how long they stay on the page, what pages are the most engaging to them, and who’s opting in to your free resources.

By gathering this data, you gain insights and the information you need to make adjustments so you can tailor your marketing efforts to appeal better to your specific target audience. Let’s say you have a free resource on your website like “download your free home value report.” If no one is opting in or giving you their email for your content - then that’s a sign that maybe you aren’t driving enough traffic to the resource, or that your ideal client doesn’t find any value in it, so that you can try again.

Now that you understand the difference between branding and marketing, you should know that the reason these two are so often confused as interchangeable (which they are NOT) is because they do have to work together.

Branding and Marketing have to coexist and that’s because neither is mutually exclusive; rather, they are interdependent and complementary. 

A successful marketing campaign for example is built on a strong brand foundation, and a compelling brand identity or personality gives your marketing efforts a unique voice and sound. Otherwise you don’t know if your tone should be bold and loud like guns and roses or conservative and moderately spoken.

BTW, in case the term marketing campaign is a new term for you, a marketing campaign is a planned sequence of steps and activities that promote the product or service of your business, with a specific goal in mind. So let’s say you’re selling a digital course - then your marketing campaign for the next 60 days could be all about promoting the value of the course so individuals buy it. If you’re a real estate agent, you could create a listing campaign, focused 100 percent on generating more seller leads.

When branding and marketing work together seamlessly, they unite and work together to make magic happen and in business, that’s sales.

When you’re clear about your branding or your brand identity, you empower your marketing messages (in those emails and social media posts) to be more consistent and powerful. 

But most entrepreneurs and small business owners should really focus more on marketing than branding - and that’s because it doesn’t matter how beautiful your branding is, how wonderful and full of amazing feelings it is, if no one knows about your business or your services. And that’s where marketing comes in.

Thanks for joining me today. If you’re ready to create a robust marketing plan that makes your business money, schedule a call with me today at writebrandmarketing.com 

Until then - 

I’m Ali Garbero, Copywriting is what I do, Content Marketing is what I create, more customers is what you get.