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Branding and Marketing: what's the difference?

Writer's picture: Chiara D'UbaldiChiara D'Ubaldi

What are they, which one comes first and why they are both essential to your business.


Branding and Marketing: these terms are often confused and misused, especially in the first phases of your business. They are different concepts and have different functions for your business, but they do work together and sometimes even overlap, which is where it can get a bit confusing.


But what is branding and what is marketing?


Branding is who you are. It defines how people perceive your business: why they love you (or hate you) and why they choose to buy again from you. A common mistake is to think about branding as the process of defining your visual identity only (your logo, color palette, font etc...). But your brand is created through everything you do: your visual identity, your customer service, your product, and also your marketing.


Marketing is what you do to be seen. All the actions you take in order to get noticed and get more people to know you are part of your marketing: your ads, SEO, promotions etc.



The differences? While branding is how you express yourself, and it's therefore a long term strategy that affects everything and everyone who gets in touch with your brand (including your team) to keep attention and drive recognition and loyalty, marketing is instead how you promote yourself, with short term strategies that get attention and drive sales.


Which one is more important for your business?


Branding and marketing are complementary: according on your goals one might have priority over the other in a specific timeframe, but you'll reach your best results only if you invest on both of them.


Marketing will get people to know you, without it people won't know your brand. Branding will get people to come back and sometimes even to buy from you the first time. Focusing only on one or the other you risk to nullify your efforts.


But if you're starting out, which one should you focus on first?


Since in their customer journey, your customers will get in touch with your marketing first, some assume that, when they're starting out, they should start from there.

In reality as a business owner you should first think about your brand. In fact, only if you define and clarify what brand you want to be, and start working on your branding, you'll be able to create marketing campaigns effective and that appeal to the right audience.

Working on your brand strategy and implementation first, this will give you the right foundations to all of your marketing efforts.


Understanding the differences between branding and marketing and their different goals, will allow you to fully optimize these strategies, and get the best out of it, so that your business will reach your ideal clients and grow.

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