You might wonder, "what is the actual difference?” Truth be told, they are different – but they also complement each other. If branding, marketing, and advertising, work together, the overall brand will excel.
Let’s dive into the difference between branding, marketing, advertising, and how they complement each other.

Branding

Branding can be explained as the core of a business. You need a strong brand to advertise and market successfully. Applying brand consistency across all platforms ensure a brand positioning and recognition. A brand is who you are, what you stand for, and what makes you different from your competitors.
Here are a few questions to help you understand and determine your brand identity better:

 ·       Who are we?

·       What is our unique value proposition?

·       Who is our ideal target audience?  

·       What problem do we solve for our customers?

·       What are our brand values?

·       What is our brand tone?

·       What would I like to communicate with my brand?

The development of a brand takes place internally within the business, it is considered the foundation for everything else you intend on doing within your business. As Simon Sinek says: “Start with why!” He sums it up perfectly: “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”

Before you can determine who you want to serve as well as what problems you intend on solving, you must understand who you are as a business, what is your brand story? This is what essentially gives your business purpose and sets you apart from your competitors within the mind of the consumer, as well as forges an emotional connection with your consumers. It is also what inspires your employees. Your brand story is merely the tip of the iceberg, concepts such as brand strategy, logos, colour schemes, messaging and brand maintenance all form part of the branding equation.  

...One of the contributing reasons as to why there has been this misconception between advertising and marketing is that advertising used to be a lot more expensive and a bigger portion of the marketing pie...

Marketing  

Marketing – the umbrella term used to describe any effort to increase sales😉.It’s not as simple of a term as it may seem… It’s vastly broad and covers a multitude of disciplines. Marketing at its core is understanding your customer, how to reach them effectively, and how to ensure they convert. To market properly you need to do market and industry research, competitor analysis, product development, pricing, customer support, websites, brochures, social media, SEO,PR, community outreach and management, mass media, just to mention a few – all needs to be in place.

It’s non-negotiable to understand your customer and their behaviour. Start with the following:

·       Understand who your customers are

·       Understand their business pain points

·       Develop products/services that will appeal to them and solve their problems

·       Position said products/services in a way that will resonate with them

·       Communicate and promote said products/services to them

 Ultimately, branding is concerned with understanding your business, whereas marketing is concerned with understanding your customers.

‍Advertising  

Often industry personnel tend to use advertising and marketing synonymously, but these two concepts are not alike. Advertising is considered a subset of marketing like social media and PR. Advertising is concerned with paying someone to tell your desired customer about your business. In layman’s terms advertising is creating an advertisement and/or paying a third-party to run said ad on their platform, for example.  

One of the contributing reasons as to why there has been this misconception between advertising and marketing is that advertising used to be a lot more expensive and a bigger portion of the marketing pie. Previously if you wanted to promote your business, you had to pay to run your ad on expensive traditional platforms such as television radio, billboards, and newspaper ads. However, the digital era has caused a major shift in the way businesses promote themselves. There is now an influx of tools and tactics to use when promoting your business – from pay-per-click ads to influencer marketing and digital banners.  There real difference is, if you are paying third-party to do the promoting for you then that is advertising, whereas if you are managing social media and other tools internally, it is then considered marketing.

 It is important to grasp the difference between branding, marketing, and advertising and how it all work together to increase brand awareness and drive sales. Branding, marketing, and advertising can be seen as puzzle pieces – the one needs the other to complete the puzzle!