Marketing Vs Branding.

I will start today’s revelation with a confession. I am not an ardent boxing fan, Nonetheless, I will slackly follow the big stars’ interesting developments. Floyd Mayweather is Feuding with 50 Cent, Mike Tyson is coming back into the ring, Tyson Fury has written a book and Anthony Joshua made a big donation.

It is a whole lot different though if there is a big match. May 2nd, 2015, Floyd Mayweather Vs Manny Pacquiao. For about 2 weeks, I closely followed all proceedings to the Tee, I waited with millions of others till the wee hours of the night to watch the biggest match of the century. For the first time ever, I watched even the curtain-raisers.

If Branding and Marketing were ever to face off, the showdown would be bigger than what was dubbed the fight of the century.

As seen in previous articles about understanding Marketing and Branding, there is an excusably frequent coincidence to overlap, mistake or substitute marketing and branding. In as much as branding is a marketing function, each on their own is a very important and fundamental discipline in the success of a business.

Branding is basically the identity of a business, the look and feel of the product, service, and entity. A number of marketers often forget that this extends to the emotional as well as physical experience of customers while relating with the product service or entity, Whether it be the look of the logo, the arrangement at the head office receptio or of the products on the shelf to the navigation of the website, It is basically regarded as the soul and persona of the entity, service or product.

Branding is the foundation. Before getting a Product, Service, or entity into the consumer’s space, it has to be a reliable representation of what you want customers to like, know, feel, or remember about your brand. I could relate it to the underlying content that is deeper than external beauty. Brand Master Academy defines Branding as the art of expressing a brand to attract the target audience to become or remain a customer.

However, to truly understand the character, there must be a standout quality that gets one noticed, to notice how intelligent someone is, I would have to get to know and speak to them first. That is how marketing works.

Marketing is the spark that helps get the soul, persona, and foundation noticed, it will get the right brand into the heart, the fridge, or shopping bag of the right consumer.

Philip Kotler, who is widely regarded as the father of Marketing defines it as the science and art of creating, exploring, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market profitably. Marketing gets the product, entity, and service to the customer. It answers the question, why this specific brand? And just like a pretty face, marketing will get the brand noticed and admired, regardless of how pretty the face is, the rest of the package must match, otherwise, the appeal will soon diminish,

Marketing without branding is like the proverbial pretty face without the rest of the package, or a house that is beautiful on the outside but untidy and rugged on the inside. It might get customers through your door fast, only for them to get out faster or never come back. For example, when another Boda Boda hailing company came to the Ugandan market, their pricing strategy made them a quick darling. They were tipped to break Safeboda’s monopoly. Soon they were riddled by internal fraud, inconsistent charges, customer complaints among other issues that affected their public perception even before they closed shop.

Perfect branding without marketing however is comparable to having the complete package that no one knows about.

Marketing and Branding are different but complementary. They should always work together. In the analogy of the boxing match, they should be a tag team facing off against the unforgiving murky market. Matter of fact one is the right and the other the left hand.

You ought to get the branding right before going to market. The background work must be done first and done well, otherwise marketing a poorly branded product is a recipe for disaster. Just like Telex Free a multi level networking concept that a big number of people subscribed to, only to discover that it was a Ponzi scheme. If however it were backed by an actually solid model, It would have probably been a massive success. Also, perfect Brading with no marketing will stunt a very good product, for example, Ugandan food, everyone who has traveled out of or into Uganda will testify to the fact that the food in Uganda is nothing short of a fairytale. You will often hear statements like, Uganda has the sweetest Pineapples, or Ugandan bananas are how bananas are truly supposed to taste. With such a great product, If backed by good marketing. Ugandan food would feature in rap songs and high-end movies. Ugandan food would be like Cigars are to Cuba or reggae is to Jamaica.

A good mix of branding and marketing will present a ubiquitous well-appreciated product and a healthy relationship between customers and brands. To ensure that this is done well, speak to a professional to get your branding and marketing strategy done.