Win with the One-Two Punch of Branding and Marketing

Branding and marketing are different but synergistic activities. 

Your brand is what prospects and customers say and think about your business. Marketing is what you say about your business, either in face-to-face settings or communicating through various media your target audiences deem credible and informative.

Driving brand and demand. You are in control of your brand and how your customers’ experience it through the products and services you deliver, the way you deliver them, the quality of customer interactions with your products and your employees as well as the value you add to those interactions.

Try it, you’ll like it. Customers are ultimately in control of your marketing success. Based on your ability to identify and communicate your company’s relevance to customers’ needs, challenges and aspirations, marketing drives awareness and trial of your company’s products or services. Successful marketing is about near-term customer action. Successful branding is about long-term customer reaction and retention. 

Marketing: the brand evangelist. To be successful marketing and branding must be symbiotic. For one thing, both need to be consistent. A successful brand results from marketing consistency. The customer comes to expect a brand will display the same qualities and benefits at each touchpoint with the company. As a brand’s evangelist, marketing serves as a constant reinforcement of brand consistency.

It begins with you. Marketing begins with the customer, branding begins at home. Busy as your company may be, introducing a new product or banging on the door of a new market segment is vital. Successful marketing references and supports the brand, while marketing’s more immediate task at hand basks in the brand’s stability.

ROI ASAP. If marketing ROI is about the quarterly profit battle, branding ROI is about the long-term marketing war. Marketing drives awareness, interest, desire and action while burnishing the brand’s ability to inspire customer loyalty, repeat sales and cross selling within a company’s product or service line.

Differentiation makes the difference. In today’s dynamic marketplace where true product/service differentiation is rare and price advantages are elusive, the synergy of branding and marketing is a primary means through which companies can build competitive differentiation by wielding meaningful, relevant and enduring relationships with their customers.

Jeffrey Barnhart

President and CEO

jbarnhart@cmasolutions.com