What’s the Difference Between Branding and Marketing?

Branding is what defines a business, its characteristics, its perception and its personality. It is an intangible asset that allows a business to gain sustainable competitive advantage resulting in distinct market position and price premium. In contrast, marketing is all about the communication with your customers about your products and services. Marketing is the vehicle that delivers your brand message to your customers and prospects. Marketing is typically what is owned by a business while customers own its brand.

Branding is what drives marketing because branding is strategic and marketing is tactical.

Branding

How do you define a successful brand? Past experience suggests that most successful brands start with a careful yet honest development of a blueprint that captures a vision, develops content (words and visuals) around it and creates a solid connection with the products and services offered. While most businesses realize that one of the most valuable assets they have is the brand name associated with their products or services yet very little work is done to develop and manage that brand.

Our branding experts address the following components of branding:

• Brand Awareness: focus on generating brand identities and value propositions. Building customers’ brand knowledge and awareness
• Brand Positioning: better position a brand in a competitive marketplace. We carefully carve out a message that will resonate with the target audience
• Brand Audit: Thorough analysis of the brands within the company portfolio
• Brand Architecture: primary focus is on creating a comprehensive and effective brand architecture. We review products and services and their organizational structures as well as their interaction with other entities within the portfolio
• Measuring brand equity: branding adds value to an organization’s products and services. We help you understand what drives your brand’s equity

Remember, every successful brand, or brand portfolio must have a compelling idea and related value propositions that offer functional and emotional benefits to its key constituencies. At Amplimark, we understand that branding is a critical business asset that requires careful brand management, investment, and updates over time to maintain or increase its economic firepower.

Marketing

Marketing plays a critical role in executing brand strategy. Our team work with companies to carefully develop marketing strategies and implement marketing programs that target market segments and solidify market position. We use strategic marketing processes to design, develop and execute marketing campaigns. From customer preferences to competition analysis, we help companies identify business objectives and develop actionable plans to achieve business goals. With in-house expertise in branding, creative and digital marketing, we combine online and offline marketing efforts to deliver meaningful business results.

How We Can Help

Our goal is to blend the theory and practice of product and brand management and address the customer-driven components of brand management. Understanding the consumer behavior perspective is one of the most crucial components of branding and marketing strategy, and we can help you connect the dots.

We work with our clients to increase understanding of the crucial issues in planning and evaluating brand strategies as well as apply appropriate theories, models, and other tools to make better branding decisions.

Need help with branding or marketing? Contact us online or give us a call at (515) 225-6438 to schedule a free, no-obligation initial consultation!