Marketing vs Branding. What’s the difference?

Marketing vs Branding: What's the difference?

What’s the difference between marketing and branding? Or What’s the difference between branding and marketing? We get asked this a lot – so here goes:

The difference between marketing and branding:

Branding creates advocates. Marketing creates leads.
Branding is long-term. Marketing is short-term.
Branding defines your trajectory. Marketing helps your cash flow.
Branding is about getting people to feel something. Marketing is about getting people to do something.
Branding is macro. Marketing is micro.
Branding is the being. Marketing is the doing.
Branding is why you do what you do. And marketing is how you do what you do.

WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BRANDING AND MARKETING?

The best thing you can do for your brand is to split the marketing and branding line items in your accounting department into one account for marketing and another for branding. That’s why it’s important to know what you are busy with.

People clump these two together in their financial statements because there will always be a slight overlap between branding and marketing, and it might be difficult to distinguish between them.

So if your content has 1. an offer, 2. an audience, and 3. a call to action, see that as marketing. But when your process is about making people feel optimistic about who you are, you should see that as branding.

So WHAT?

Do you need both? Yes, absolutely! Can you afford both? As a business, you cannot afford not to market and brand yourself because your competitors are doing both, right now.

Learn to distinguish between the two and aim to lower your marketing spend over time as your brand builds a loyal audience. Building a strategy around content and content marketing can help build brand awareness and lower monthly ad spend. The biggest brands in the world spend almost nothing on marketing but millions on branding. They can only do this because they have created millions of loyal advocates to spread the word for them.

If you manage to make it past this image, we can dive deeper:

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