Branding:How Does It Work,Is Branding And Marketing The Same Thing.

What is a brand first of all “Branding is not a logo” a logo is a very useful tool for business but is not the brand it is the symbol for the brand.

A brand is a result, it is a customers gut feeling about a product, service or company. it ends up in their heads, in their hearts and so in a sense when you create a brand you are not creating one brand you are creating millions of brand like however many customers or people in your audience, each one has a different brand of you.

A brand is like a reputation, it is your business reputation and everyone is going to be a little bit different about what that reputation is and that is absolutely okay as long as you have got it corralled mostly where you want it and that is beneficial to the company.

What Is Branding?

Branding is the act of expressing a brand to attract and nurture the target audience to become and remain a customer by shaping their perception.

In other words branding is the expression of everything that brand represents from it position to its internal brand, its visual identity what it values are everything that a brand expresses about who it is. is what we call branding.

Branding can be visually, verbally or written or otherwise so when you tweet your branding when you post a content you are branding, when you place an advertisement in the market you are branding, when you also do some seo you are branding, when you have a display ads you are branding and lastly when you have a customer service rep on the phone you are branding.

So every touch point of your brand is a piece of branding that includes all of your advertising and all of your marketing.

What Is Marketing?

Marketing is the promotion of product, service or the brand itself in order to drive sales in your business, so there is a lot of crossover here with branding.

Searh everywhere optimization (seo) is marketing, Search Engine marketing (sem) is marketing, content promotion is marketing and also advertising is marketing, anything on the front line of the brand that drive sales is marketing.

When Is Marketing Not Branding?

Actually alot of people ask me this question so the answer is “Never” so that means that all instances of marketing is branding any form pf marketing at any touch point is the front lines of that brand.

However, it is an expression of the brand and that is branding so the short answer to that question is that all marketing is a form of branding.

When Is Branding Not Marketing?

There are many forms of expression of a brand but not all expressions of a brand are in relation to promoting a product or a service that lead directly to a sale so while branding includes all forms of promotional content and all forms of marketing.

There is a direct sale linked to that form of promotion, it also includes every other touch point and every other expression of the brand where there is no sale attached, where there is no call to action and it is just about nurturing the relationship.

So a exmaple of this could be a customer service, it could be packaging design, an email drip sequence, or how-to video that get fed to the audience, any form of communication where there is no ask it all about the relationship.

It is all about nurturing so any form of communication where there is no motive, there is no direct sales involved, it is just communication, that also can be called Branding, so branding includes marketing and the promotions but it also includes all form of communication when there is no promotion and it is just nurturing.

Difference Between Branding And Marketing.

Branding wants a Relationship while Marketing wants a transaction and just like all relationships any relationship between people they include and make possible the transaction that happned within that relationship.

But the relationship is far more than just transactions so i hope that cleared your worries for you and you now have the skills to be able to go out and articulate the difference to friends, colleagues and to clients because this is an argument that is been going on a for a long time and not lot of people have the clarity or the ability to differentiate between the two.

If you are able to do that and you are able to do that and you are able to help your colleague and to help your clients to fully understand they will be greatful for that clarity so it is our jobs as brand builders and as brand manager and leaders to be able to split the difference between those key elements of promoting a business.

If we are able to help the people around us to understand it well, then we are going to help our brand as well because anybody with their hands on our brand is expressing our brand and we want them to undertand the goals of branding, the goals of marketing so they can go out and do their jobs properly.