Brand or marketing? You are probably mixing them up
One is who you are. The other is how you tell people. Confusing them is an expensive habit.
Last month a restaurant owner in Ballygunge told me, "We already have a brand. Now I just need marketing." Two minutes later he said, "Actually, I am not sure what the difference is." He is not alone. Most business owners use the two words as if they mean the same thing.
They do not, and mixing them up can waste a lot of money. This post explains brand strategy vs marketing strategy in plain words, with examples you can use this week.
The simple way to see brand strategy vs marketing strategy
Here is how I explain it to clients.
Your brand strategy is who you are, what you stand for, and why you exist. Your marketing strategy is how you tell the right people about it, and how you get them to buy.
One is the personality. The other is the conversation. If you try to have a conversation without knowing who you are, you end up saying whatever sounds good that day.
What brand strategy covers
A brand strategy answers questions about identity.
Who are we for? What do we believe in? What do we want people to feel when they deal with us? How do we sound, look and behave? What do we never do?
It includes your positioning, your values, your tone of voice and your promise. It changes slowly. A good brand strategy should still make sense in three or four years.
If you want to go further on this side, read my post on brand positioning strategy, because positioning sits right at the centre of a brand.
What marketing strategy covers
A marketing strategy answers questions about action.
Which customers do we go after this year? What offer do we put in front of them? Which channels do we use, how often, and how much do we spend? What numbers tell us it is working?
It changes more often. A marketing strategy for the winter wedding season will be different from the one for monsoon. Your brand, though, stays the same in both.
A restaurant example
Take two restaurants in Kolkata, both serving Bengali food.
The first one has a clear brand. It is the place for old family recipes from Dhaka, cooked slowly, served on brass plates, with a menu that tells the story of each dish. Everything they do feels like that, from the staff uniforms to the way they reply on Instagram.
Their marketing for October is a Durga Puja thali, promoted on Instagram and through local food bloggers, with bookings taken on WhatsApp. It has a start date, a budget and a number: two hundred bookings.
The second restaurant serves very similar food, but has no clear idea of what it stands for. One month the posts are about discounts, the next about a DJ night, then about a pizza offer. Each campaign may work for a week. Nothing builds.
Same food. Same area. The first one has a brand strategy that guides the marketing. The second has marketing activity with nothing underneath.
What goes wrong when you only have one
Marketing without a brand gives you noise. You get clicks and offers but no loyalty. Customers buy once because of the discount and forget you. You keep paying to find new people because nobody stays.
A brand without marketing gives you a beautiful secret. The logo is lovely, the colours are chosen, the story is written, and almost nobody knows. I have seen a boutique in Southern Avenue with a gorgeous identity and four hundred followers, because no one had ever planned how to reach new customers.
You need both, and in the right order.
The right order
Start with the brand, even if it is only a rough version. Then build marketing on top of it.
A D2C tea brand I worked with began the other way round. They ran ads first and were disappointed. We stopped for three weeks and answered the brand questions: who the tea is for, what makes it different, and how it should sound. It turned out to be for office goers who want a proper cup at their desk, from small estates in Darjeeling, with no fancy language. Only then did we rewrite the ads. Cost per order dropped by almost a third.
If you are at this stage, my post on marketing strategy for startups shows the next steps once the brand basics are clear.
A quick self check
Use this to see where you stand.
Marketing questions: Do I have one goal for the next ninety days? Do I know which two channels I am using? Do I check numbers every two weeks?
If you said no to the brand questions, fix those first. If you said no to the marketing questions, plan those next.
In a small business, the owner usually holds the brand. It lives in your decisions: what you say yes to, what you refuse, how you treat a complaint. No agency can invent that for you, though a good consultant can help you put it into words.
Marketing can be shared. A team member can post, reply and run small tests, as long as they know the brand rules and the current goal.
Keep both simple
The brand strategy vs marketing strategy question gets easier once both are written down. You do not need a hundred page document for either of them. A brand can be summed up on one page and a marketing plan on another.
If you are not sure which of the two needs your attention right now, send me a message. A short chat usually makes it clear.