Brace yourself, because what I’m about to say might come as a shock to you – branding is not marketing. I repeat, BRANDING IS NOT MARKETING. Marketing is tactical in that it consists of many many small scale steps and campaigns to progress your business towards your goals. Branding is a strategic backbone showing your audience who you are and what you’re all about. It’s the voice of the business. A strong branding strategy expresses the values, attributes, and characteristics of what a brand is or is not.
While branding, marketing, advertising and promotion are all different and necessary components of a successful business, branding is what ties the overall brand together and ensures cohesiveness among the other components. You cannot run a successful marketing, advertising or promotional campaign without a strategic, specific branding strategy in place. Marketing, advertising and promotion all help you get your message out, but branding guides you to substantiate what your message is and what it means to be a part of it.
The brand itself is much larger than any one particular development and exposure component. Branding is what sticks when the marketing push has worn away. Marketing may convince someone to buy a particular product or service, but branding is what builds loyal, supportive, advocating consumers. Branding should be the foundation or underlying component of any and all marketing strategies.
Branding also encompasses personal authenticity. You’ve probably heard of the term personal branding, which is when an individual markets themselves and their career as a brand. Regardless of if you want your brand to personally reflect who you are, you still need to generate a personal identity within the brand. People connect with a person before they will connect with your business. Maintaining and encouraging personal characteristics within your branding establishes reliability and trust between your brand and the public.
Great brands strategically embed their authentic message into your life before you even know it. You can’t develop a brand solely upon the consumer, otherwise you may risk losing your genuine voice – you have to stand your ground. On the other hand, you also can’t completely ingore the community and selfishly build your brand based on just your own needs and values. It’s an intricate game of finding your place within both ends of the spectrum. Don’t select a market to be in based just on your brand, pick a market you’re comfortable immersing yourself in. Play with your message in a few related markets to define what type of people your message will resonate strongly with.
Consistency is an essential component for successful branding. The easiest way to lose your audience is confusing them, which is inevitable without a branding strategy. Branding is the blood of your brand that flows through all the other organs to keep your business alive. Branding is scary and requires you to plan ahead, because you should be thinking about how to make the infrastructure of your business entity timeless. Ultimately, if you take the time to thoroughly develop your branding strategy, I promise you will thank me later. Rebranding is one of the hardest things to do. Most companies don’t ever recover unless they have enough money to throw at the issue.
And of course if you need help developing your branding strategy, we’re here for you! Email info@allynlewis.com for additional details.
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