Branding vs. Marketing: 5 Key Differences No One Tells You

Around 89% of consumers are loyal to brands they perceive as sharing their values. Learning about the differences between branding vs marketing will help you understand both terms better.

Brands with blogs generate 67% more leads than brands without blogs. Blogging serves both branding and marketing purposes, but how can you tell which is happening at any given moment?

You’ve invested hard work and money into your business. You deserve to have the ability to differentiate branding from marketing.

Here are five important differences between marketing and branding:

1. Brands Set Expectations

Sure, brands have visual components like brand colors and logos, but they also have intangible qualities such as brand personality, brand values, and more. Either way, your brand revolves around expectations you’ve set for your audience.

Your brand has a unique identity with features that make it stand out from the competition. Your branding strategy shapes your brand personality while your marketing strategy promotes it. When your marketing efforts match your branding efforts, you target your audience right.

2. Marketing Relies On Sharing

If branding defines what your business is and why it exists, marketing flaunts those qualities to generate sales and conversions. The best marketing messages overlap with your brand messages well.

Marketing efforts depend on sharing and communication. Even with a big brand personality, your brand will only do so well if you don’t get out there and market it accordingly.

Tailor your marketing strategy around communicating marketing messages that resonate with your audience. The greater that resonance is, the more sales you’ll attract.

3. Emotions and Consumer Connection

Both company branding and marketing involve creating an emotional connection with consumers. Brands strive to stand out by evoking powerful emotions in relation to their brand identities. Branding efforts consist of anything from increasing brand awareness with clever memes to designing your brand’s online website.

Marketing also aims to inspire emotions for the sake of generating sales, leads, and other conversions. It supports a brand’s mission and the feelings it inspires by sharing that mission with the world. Striking the right emotional chords with your audience equals more sales for you.

4. Tactics vs. Positioning

Marketing is more tactical in nature than branding is. After all, marketing focuses on short-term selling tactics.

Branding, however, is more about strategy. It relies on long-term positioning to develop and maintain a strong brand that boosts a business’s value.

That’s why brand marketing is such a different beast! It involves promoting your products/services in a way that highlights your entire brand. It requires both long-term brand positioning and short-term selling tactics for success.

5. Social Media Differences

Social media marketing is different from social media branding. This proves that branding and marketing efforts interact with social media differently.

Social media marketing involves promoting products/services on social media to generate sales. Social media branding involves spreading brand awareness and bolstering brand messages through posts.