You know you need to market, brand, and advertise your business…but do you know the best way to leverage each avenue of promotion?

There’s an art to knowing what your business needs and when it needs it. Keep reading to learn how branding shapes your business identity, marketing targets your audience, and advertising amplifies your message, all with the common goal of driving sustained business success.

Understanding the Jargon...

Today we find ourselves in the position of the six blind men of Hindustan, unable to describe an elephant except through our separate specialties. The brand is the product, says the product manager. It’s the company’s reputation, says the PR consultant. The brand is the tagline, says the copywriter. No—it’s the visual identity, says the graphic designer. Our brand is our culture, says the CEO. The brand surely derives from functionality, says the engineer. Like the blind men of the fable, all of us are partly right, and all of us are wrong.

Marty Neumeier

Let’s be real the terms ‘advertising’, ‘marketing’, and ‘branding’ have been blended together, misused, and retold in a million different contexts. It’s because of this confusing language that Marty Neumeier & Google's Brandlab have developed a standardised dictionary to unify industries and help the collaborative process of business building.

Let’s break down three of the most commonly used terms in accordance with these standardised definitions so that you can learn exactly how you need to use each area of promotion to grow your business.

Branding - The Foundation of Your Business

‘Any effort or program designed to increase value or avoid commoditisation by building a differentiated brand.’

Brand A-Z

Branding is the bedrock upon which your entire promotion strategy rests. Branding is not a one-time job but rather a consistent and evolving part of your business. It should serve as the foundation upon which everything else is built. Getting branding right at the beginning of your business could make or break your business. As your business moves through growth periods you should continually realign your branding to ensure your company stays relevant and disruptive.

What makes a good brand strategy -

• Defined Target Audience - Get to know exactly who your ideal customers are, their needs, preferences, and pain points.

• Differentiated Positioning - Your brand should stand out in the marketplace. A strong brand strategy involves positioning your business uniquely, highlighting what makes it different from competitors.

• Relatable Storytelling - Effective branding tells a compelling story that resonates with your audience. It's about creating narratives that customers can relate to and connect with emotionally.

• Emotional Connection - Successful brands go beyond logos and slogans; they establish a profound emotional connection with their audience by using storytelling and reliability.

• Consistent Clarity - Maintaining consistency across all touchpoints is vital. If your message is confusing, your customers will lose interest. Simple sells.

Branding is the long-term strategy that guides your business decisions and marketing/advertising efforts. You can learn more about it here.

Marketing - Short-term & focused promotion efforts

‘The process of developing, promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service’

Brand A-Z

Where branding is long-term and broad, marketing is short-term and focused. Where branding is macro, marketing is micro. 

Using your brand strategy as a foundation for your marketing efforts ensures your business is in alignment with its target audience, goals, and relevancy at all times. With a strong brand foundation, your marketing efforts can become even more potent. Marketing is the strategic approach to reaching your ideal customers, understanding their needs, and delivering tailored solutions. It ensures that you communicate effectively with the right audience using the right message. There are many ways to market your business, you don’t need to do all of them but the ones you do should be done well. Here are some types of marketing.

• Content Marketing: Creating and distributing valuable, relevant content to attract and engage a target audience. This can include blog posts, videos, infographics, and more.

• Social Media Marketing: Utilising social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to connect with and influence audiences.

• Influencer Marketing: Partnering with influencers or individuals with a significant following to promote products or services to their audience.

• Email Marketing: Sending targeted messages to a list of subscribers to nurture leads and build relationships.

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Using paid advertising on search engines like Google or Bing to appear at the top of search results.

• Event Marketing: Promoting a brand or product through live events, trade shows, webinars, and conferences.

• Guerrilla Marketing: Unconventional and low-cost marketing tactics that rely on creativity and surprise to grab people's attention, often in unexpected places or ways.

Advertising: Amplifying Your Message

‘Paid communications aimed at persuading an audience to buy a product, use a service, change a behaviour, or adopt a viewpoint.

Brand A-Z

Advertising is a subset of marketing that specifically deals with the promotion aspect. It involves crafting persuasive messages and disseminating them through various media channels to reach a wide audience. Advertising aims for hyper focused results such as immediate sales or raising awareness of time-sensitive offers. While it contributes to building a brand over time, its primary focus is on communication and persuasion. In essence, marketing directs the specific tactics that will be used to spread the brand goals whereas advertising executes the promotional tactics within that direction. 

Types of advertising 

• Print Advertising: This includes advertisements placed in newspapers, magazines, flyers, and brochures, allowing businesses to reach their target audience through printed media.

• Television Advertising: Commercials aired on television networks or local cable channels, offering a visual and audio medium to convey messages to a wide audience.

• Radio Advertising: Ads broadcast on AM/FM radio stations, using sound to engage listeners with product or service promotions.

• Outdoor Advertising: This encompasses billboards, transit ads on buses and subways, posters at bus stops, and other outdoor displays strategically placed to capture public attention.

• Online Display Advertising: Digital advertisements such as banner ads, pop-up ads, and interactive ads are placed on websites and apps to target online users.

• Video Advertising: Commercials or promotional videos shown on digital platforms like YouTube, social media, or streaming services, engaging viewers with visual content.

The Synergy of Branding, Marketing, and Advertising

These concepts are important to understand because they work harmoniously together to for an overall business promotion strategy. You must understand each one specifically in order to understand where to focus your resources. In summary - Advertising is specific, creative focused and medium driven. Marketing is a short-term focused strategy that guides the advertising direction. Branding is the macro strategy that guides the business direction and informs the marketing efforts.

Need more guidance. We’d love to help - Let’s chat!