Branding and Strategy: Are They One and the Same?

You may have heard the term, “Branding is strategic… marketing is tactical.”

But what does it mean? While there is a spectrum of opinions when it comes to defining digital marketing references such as “brand strategy,” marketing can most definitely be considered a way of promoting, actively, a product or service – a “push” tactic. This is the process of pushing out a message to achieve sales results (“You should purchase our product because it’s better than the competition’s,” or because “it’s cool” or because “so and so celebrity likes it” etc.).

However, this is not the same thing as “branding.”

Branding should both underlie and precede any marketing effort; it is not a push, but rather a “pull.” A brand will help encourage a prospect to invest in (purchase) a product while directly providing support to any marketing or sales initiatives in progress – in other words, the brand does not explicitly scream, “Buy me!” but instead says, “This is what I am… this is why I exist. If you’re in agreement and if you happen to like me, you can take me home, support me and recommend me to others.”

Marketing may be a contributing factor when it comes to a brand, but the brand is more encompassing than any specific marketing effort. The brand is what remains after the marketing has “swept through the room,” per se; it’s what sticks in the mind of prospective customers with regard to a product, service or organization.

The point we’re trying to make here is that there’s a difference between branding and strategy when it comes to modern marketing, and WELS GLOBAL boasts the resources to help both start-up businesses and existing companies with their efforts in these distinct areas.

Branding Services Geared Towards Start-Ups

If you have just launched a start-up business and don’t know where or how to start when it comes to marketing, WELS GLOBAL can help you with the following:

• Defining your purpose
• Creating a brand promise
• Conveying emotion
• Building competitive awareness
• Market research
• Developing brand guidelines
• Creating logos, themes and taglines
• Building brand identity

Once defining your brand, WELS GLOBAL will prepare your marketing campaign and propose a launch program to kick-start your business based on the objectives.

Strategy/Marketing Services Geared Towards Existing Companies

Run an already-established business but want to make some improvements? WELS GLOBAL can help in that department as well, with strategies such as:

• Executing and revamping your brand promise
• Creating a community to widen your presence
• Employee involvement/morale-building
• Loyalty tactics via brand ambassadors and customer retention
• Brand expansion via continuous innovation
• Give-back
• Legacy building

After re-defining your brand, WELS GLOBAL will evaluate which marketing strategy worked for you in the past and will propose strategies designed to work best in today’s market, while outlining marketing campaigns developed to give you that fresh start and catch consumers’ attention.