What Is Branding?

In a nutshell, branding is who you are—and marketing is how you build awareness. Branding is your strategy, while marketing encompasses your tactical goals. In order to determine who your brand is, you need to ask yourself several questions. Questions that go beyond industry generalizations, and services or products offered and also questions to determine who you are as a company, and more importantly, who you are as a brand. The questions below are an excellent place to begin:

• What are your core principles and values?
• What is your mission statement?
• What inspired you to build your business?
• Why do you want to offer your products or services to your target audience?
• What makes you unique?
• What is your internal company culture?
• What is your professional sense of style?
• What are your communication characteristics?
• What do you want to come to mind when someone hears your business name?
• How do you want people to feel when they think of your business?
• How do you want customers to describe you as a company?

Answering the questions above will help you to understand the difference between branding and marketing. Invest your time in providing elaborate answers, and bounce them off your colleagues and professional mentors. What you will notice, is that all of the questions are related to your internal operations and your internal culture. Therefore, what you build on the inside, is what will emanate externally.

Your branding will cultivate what your consumers can expect of you, and what they will experience when they utilize your products or services. By clearly defining who you are, your branding can then be utilized to precede and underlie your marketing efforts—both today and for years to come.

What Is Marketing?

When speaking of marketing vs. branding, marketing refers to the tools you utilize to deliver the message of your brand. Marketing will continually change and evolve, just as the products and services you offer will continue to change and evolve. Marketing will be directly and specifically geared towards sectors of your target audience, all while supporting the core values of your brand.

Marketing is vast and wide. It can be heartfelt, funny, or serious. It can be any mix of text, keywords, photos, charts, graphs, and videos. Marketing will be performed by a variety of online and offline methods—some of the most common being:

• SEO
• Content Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Pay Per Click Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Television
• Radio
• Print Campaigns / Advertising

However, there are many other methods of both online and offline marketing for you to consider working with your marketing campaign. While marketing methods will come and go, and the methods you utilize may change drastically from year-to-year, or from season-to-season—your brand will always remain constant.

Contact Collier Design | Marketing today for a free consultation on your next project.