What is the difference between marketing and branding?

Marketing TipsBranding

Jun 10

Written By brandmerry

What is the difference between marketing and branding?

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

You should know that you need both branding and marketing to grow your business, but which comes first and do you always need to be focusing on both? Let's dive into all your branding and marketing questions on the blog! | brandmerry.com

In today’s episode, I took a deep dive into the difference between branding and marketing.

I specifically wanted to share the difference between the two, but also outline what happens at each of those stages.

I find that entrepreneurs sometimes get a little confused as to how long the branding process should take. When they should start marketing. How long to dedicate to marketing their brand and what marketing even entails.

Which one should we build first is a huge question that my clients have when they come to me. And I'm answering all of those questions, and more, in today's episode.

LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS

I'm hopeful that no matter where you're at in your business, this is going to give you some insight into some of the gaps that you need to fill, or the next steps that you can take to create your revenue-generating business.

I believe that you do need both branding and marketing. However, what I often see happening online is that people are going about the branding and the marketing in a reversed order, or skipping one entirely.

I'll even go as far as to say they’re spending way too much time on one over the other.

BRANDING VS. MARKETING

So what's the difference? How do we decide which is which and where should we focus our energy where we're at right now in our business?

Branding is about the experience that you are creating for your audience. I also love to refer to it as the foundation.

So if you're thinking about your business like a building, you're thinking about constantly building and adding on to it, getting taller, expanding, scaling, and you need a solid foundation from which to do all of that.

So your brand foundation is what gives you that footing to know what to talk about, where to show up, what you’re offering and more.

I see a lot of entrepreneurs who skim the branding piece of the puzzle in one of three ways.

Some people go into it and build that solid foundation, and that's what I teach over here at Brandmerry, specifically in my course You! Branded.
Some people will skim it, who will just tap their toe into the water a little bit as it comes to branding, but not build a solid foundation. So when they start to scale then it starts to crumble and they realize they’ve got some problems here.
It might sound like, “I keep trying to build higher. I keep trying to reach more people. I keep trying to make more money, but my foundation is crumbling.”
Or we have people who spend way too much time on branding and they don't market their business at all. They wonder why they're not making any money because no one knows about their offer.

So branding is essential in the success of a business.

What I want you to think about when it comes to branding is building that foundation in which you can scale your business.

Now, for marketing, we want to think of it as brand awareness and attraction.

This is you putting your message out into the world. Once you have a solid brand and you've done it correctly, you very rarely need to go back to it. The branding will take some revisiting from time to time. It's always great to be asking and getting ideal client’s feedback. It's always great to go back and check on your offers and your messaging to make sure that they're relevant. You will evolve.

So yes, you're going to need to check back in on your brand from time to time, but if you build that solid brand foundation like we teach over here at Brandmerry, you won't need to keep going back and tweaking and making things different all the time.

There are two phases, in my opinion, when it comes to building a business, branding and marketing. And the second phase, marketing, is all about taking your brand and getting that out into the world.

You’ll hear people talk a lot about brand awareness, and brand awareness is marketing.

It is making other people aware of your brand. In my opinion, awareness isn’t part of the branding process, but you're probably picking up that you can't have one without the other.

BUILDING BRAND AWARENESS

So how do you build brand awareness and market if you don't know what the brand is? How do you know what to market if you don't know what you're marketing?

You can’t! This is why branding and marketing fit side by side for all businesses.

It doesn't matter what you sell, you have to have both. But what I see people doing over and over and over again, is that they're missing one.

They spend a lot of time and a lot of energy building their brand, which is essential, and you need it, but then they're wondering, well, why aren't people finding me?
How come I can't sell anything?
Or how come nobody's landing on my website that I spent all this time creating?

Because they're lacking the marketing.

Or I see a lot of entrepreneurs jump into marketing.

They start posting on social media without a clear roadmap or plan. They start creating multiple offers and promoting them willy-nilly without understanding their ideal customer because they've skipped the branding phase.

A NOTE ON SELLING

Some people say there's branding, marketing, and selling.

But, I don’t agree, because in my opinion marketing is selling. If you’re showing up and marketing your business correctly, then you’re also selling.

If you're constantly bringing in quality leads, leading them through your marketing and leading them through the client journey, then you're selling automatically.

So that’s why it’s important to strip it back and focus on two main pieces: Branding and Marketing.

How much easier is it when you think about running a business with two single pieces, that's all you need.

MARKETING YOUR SMALL BUSINESS

Look, I get it, marketing can be complex.

There are a lot of different pieces that change frequently, and it's something that's happening every single day in your business.

But when you're thinking about showing up and the marketing efforts that you're doing currently, how are they going?

Is it a matter of showing up and marketing, but your message is all over the place?

Not being a hundred percent sure what you’re talking about, or promoting?

Having trouble coming up with content ideas? That's a huge red flag.

Then I would encourage you to go back and build your solid brand foundation.

If you feel like you have a solid brand foundation, but nobody's finding you, then it's probably a marketing problem.

Here are some questions to consider to identify where your gaps lie:

Am I showing up consistently in my business?
- YES - Great keep going!
- NO - It’s your marketing (start there)!
How's that going for me?
Does it feel like my message is all over the place, and I'm not super clear?
Do I struggle to come up with content?
Does my brand feel messy or incomplete?

A lot of entrepreneurs I work with privately will come to me with their Facebook ads and their website, they’re blogging, but nothing's happening. And when we get down to it and we ask those questions, it's super clear that they're missing some major gaps in their brand.

THE MOST POPULAR GAPS IN BRANDING

NUMBER ONE:

Niching down, this is phase one of the branding process that I teach. And this is ultimately the problem you solve.

You've got to figure out what problem you solve and how you're supporting your clients from the start.

If you don't know that from the beginning, then your messaging is going to be confusing to them, and you're going to have a really hard time leading to the sale.

NUMBER TWO:

The second thing that you want to determine is who you're selling to. I think that this might be one of the most important things that you will determine in the branding process because your ideal customer will determine so much of your marketing strategy.

It's going to determine where you're showing up, how you're showing up, what kind of content you're creating, your topics, how long your videos are if you do live video, YouTube, if you're using Pinterest. All of that is going to depend on what you discover at the branding phase.

You need to understand at a very, very deep level who you're targeting, but the ideal customer work is typically where a lot of people are slack-a-lakin.

You need to identify who you are ultimately wanting to attract and sell to. And yes, I said, who, I don't mean 75 different people, who? If you're just starting, please do a favor and focus on one core audience. You can scale as you get bigger, you can have more offers as you get bigger. You'll have more credibility. You'll have more testimonials. You'll have social proof. You'll have those pieces, you'll have a team.

But in the beginning, it's probably just you, maybe a VA if you're lucky, so you want to focus and streamline.

This is one of the things that are important with branding. Some people fear talking about the same thing over and over again, but that is the key to branding. Become known for one specific thing. And then as you are making consistent money and sales in that, add on the different pieces.

NUMBER THREE:

And then the third gap in branding that I typically see is, just messing up the whole thing, is messaging.

I can tell if your messaging is off because of how you're showing up on social media, or your blog content. If there’s a break in consistency, then there’s a break in your messaging.

A key part of branding is repetition. Don't be afraid to talk about the same things in a bunch of different ways, become known for that thing.

DO YOU NEED BOTH BRANDING AND MARKETING?

The answer is YES!

Branding is focused on the experience, the beating heart of your business. So without it, your business is not there.

And then marketing is how you share that with the world. Marketing is how you build brand awareness and where the client attraction happens, which ultimately leads to the sale.

So you have to have both, but one will not work without the other.

Branding is the foundation. You don't have to go back and fix that all the time. You get it, you start marketing it, and then you make tiny adjustments as you market and get feedback.

But a lot of people will sit with branding, and they'll go through it over and over and over and over again, and two years down the line they're like, well, I haven't made any money and it’s because they're not marketing their business.

This is why it’s important to solidify your branding early on. I teach my signature branding process inside the Build a Better Brand Method.

This on-demand training will walk you through my signature 6-part process, plus share insider tips on storytelling, ideal customer and messaging.

In that training I also share with you, my course, You! Branded.

P.S. If you’re interested in a customized approach to branding your business, then my VIP Brand Intensives might be for you. During this 30-day intensive we will solidify your brand and give you the confidence to market your business online. Learn more and apply at brandmerry.com/intensive.