Are Branding and Marketing the Same?

by Brian Reich | 21 Jul 2006, 2:00am

People ask me all the time if branding and marketing are the same (hint: they are not).    So when  Karen E. Klein, a business columnist for the  LA Times, offered up the following answer in  her small business ‘In Box’ column this week, I had to share it:

Question: How does a small business brand itself? Is branding the same thing as marketing?

Answer: Branding your firm is a crucial part of your overall marketing strategy. Establishing a brand involves defining your company, knowing exactly what niche you serve in your industry and convincing your potential customers that your product or service is the only solution to their problem.

The smaller the enterprise, the more important branding is because small firms tend to have fewer resources and lower marketing budgets.

If you have established a strong brand, you will not have to do as much marketing to have an effect on potential customers.

“The truth is that branding has to occur before any other kind of marketing: advertising, public relations, Web marketing, identity and so forth,” said Rob Frankel, a branding expert and author of “The Revenge of Brand X.”

Once people are aware of your company and are convinced that yours is the only solution for them, they will stop shopping elsewhere.

“The clearer your brand message, the more likely people are to tell others about it, including why it’s the only brand to buy. That’s how you turn users into evangelists. Your advertising, public relations and other marketing efforts run more cost-effectively because the message gets through much more quickly and memorably.

“That’s how branding works,” Frankel said.

Unfortunately, he said, most companies don’t spend much — if any — time on brand strategy development, thinking they’ll do fine if they can just make potential customers aware of their products.

“The result is that they spend five or six times the marketing money on marketing that has no brand strategy, so it simply doesn’t work,” Frankel said.

More information on specific branding strategies, along with case studies, is available free at Frankel’s website, http://www.robfrankel.com .

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