Branding vs Marketing: No Chicken and Egg (Smart Monday/Process)

Hello there, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing.  Before we begin our discussion I would like to let you know that we have a brand new LinkedIn Group called Once a Day Marketing.  It’s designed for dialogue between small businesses and marketing experts who will share their expertise to enable businesses become more successful.  Go to LinkedIn and join us to start participating.

Today we are going to answer the age old question of which came first, the chicken vs. the egg; at least when it comes to marketing and branding.

Let’s start by looking at the definition of branding vs. marketing.  Branding is creating an accurate identity in the mind of your customers of what your product is all about.  Marketing is the process of conveying or communicating that information to your target audiences. Branding precedes marketing and that is what we are going to talk about next.

Let me site an example to explain further.  Companies often say they are branding and marketing are because they have a website.  Creating a website is a great milestone to achieve however, but it is neither branding or marketing.  A website is really a marketing tool, one of the 7Ps of marketing.  Ensuring the website conveys the appropriate identity to be shared with potential customers is the branding.  How a company lets people know about the website in the first place is the marketing.

To accomplish your branding objectives you must have a clear vision of your product’s benefits, what makes you number one in the marketplace and who your target customers are.  Then develop a clear marketing direction to allow potential customers to find you.  So, in my mind, branding does precede marketing.

Therefore, if branding is the chicken and marketing is the egg, I think we have finally have figured it out: the chicken definitely precedes the egg.

That wraps up Smart Monday, try to stop by tomorrow for Strategic Tuesday.  To discuss an online or face to face service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing and we’ll see you next time.