Differences Between Brand Management & Brand Marketing

  1. Marketing is a great way to grab a customer's attention; branding is a great way to keep that attention. There is always competition to be had for the customer's attention. And to get that attention, brand marketing is imperative. 

Getting your customer's attention is half the battle won. When you are looking to keep that attention, that's where branding plays a role. People get behind brands they believe in – while brand marketing can help you with breaking through the clutter, building a brand that people connect with is equally important. 

In a nutshell, the appropriate brand marketing and brand management strategies will work to set your brand apart from the competition and even foster a long-term relationship with your customer. 

  1. Brand management fosters recognition and loyalty, while marketing boosts sales. Most marketing strategies at their core, be it SEO, advertising, or content marketing, are carried out with the aim of increasing sales. 
  2. Brand management takes a different and a more long-term approach to encouraging sales. Building brand recognition, fostering positive brand sentiment, and customer loyalty are just as important as marketing. Managing it well will have a lasting impact on the ability to drive sales.

When it comes to sales, brand marketing is akin to a short sprint, while brand management is more like a marathon.

  1. Brand Management comes first; marketing is second. This is a business version of the classic chicken and egg situation. In the natural order of things, branding would always come before marketing. There is a good reason for that. Without having a brand in place, what would you market?

So, before drawing up a marketing strategy, you need to ask yourself the following questions.  What are your brand's core values? What can you bring to the table? And finally, how are you going to communicate your brand value to your potential customers?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you could proceed to work on having a marketing strategy in place. Only when the branding process has been taken care of will you have a clear understanding of your customer demographic, the best ways to reach out to those customers, and build a marketing strategy that does just that. 

  1. Brand marketing strategies evolve according to the need of the hour –  but branding, that's forever. 

As long as you are trying to maintain and grow your business, actively pursuing brand marketing strategies is of paramount importance. What is clear is, the marketing strategies you develop are going to reach their logical conclusion, after which they become redundant.   

Brand management, on the other hand, is all about defining your company, shaping how your target audience perceives the brand created and fostering a meaningful relationship with your customers.  While aspects of a firm's branding strategies may change over time, its core values will remain unchanged, and that's what resonates with its customers.

Brand management creates as much of an impact on your team as it has the predisposition to do on your customers. Brand marketing strategies that your team develops are purely a means to an end to propel sales for the business. They aren't going to be impacted on any significant level by the strategies they come up with.

Brand marketing is an entirely different story. Your firm's branding can have an equally profound impact on the team formulating the strategy, just as it does with your customers. Just as you need your customers to give credence to your brand so that they do business with you, it is the same for your employees. 

When you work to build a brand that your team forms an emotional connection with, they are going to focus on their work in a more passionate and committed fashion. They will push themselves to bring their best ideas to the fore, and the trade-off is a business that thrives.