Question

Topic: Branding

Branding Vs Marketing Vs Sales

Posted by Anonymous on 8/27/2007 at 12:20 PM ET 500 Points
My big question..is what is the difference between marketing ( as defined below) + brand"ing". What would a brand consultant do versus a marketing consultant?

Just read an excerpt from an email from author, Loral Langheimer- she defines marketing vs sales..her marketing sounds a lot like "branding" definitions I have read..

"marketing is not sales, and sales is not marketing. Anyone who’s said otherwise has got it wrong. Marketing is about your message, about defining the value of what you offer and how you get the word out to your potential customers. Why should people buy from you and what’s in it for them? Sales is how you actually engage your customers, generate leads and then make the transaction—how the cash comes in. Through marketing, you want to create awareness. "
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 8/27/2007 at 12:29 PM Member
    Marketing is telling people about your solution to their problems.

    Branding is ensuring that the message is consistently reflected in all customer contact: phone, email, web, print, customer service, etc. It's words AND actions.
  • Posted on 8/27/2007 at 12:31 PM Accepted
    I don't know who Loral is, but she had me up until her definition of Sales. That might be an older definition, but given the tools we have today, engaging customers ("prospects" is the precise term, actually) and generating leads is the job of MARKETING, not Sales.

    To your main question, the brand consultant provides one of the many tools a marketing consultant works with. Call it one or some of these:
    - brand identity
    - brand essence
    - brand expression/message
    - brand experience
    The brand consultant defines what the brand stands for and how it should be communicated.

    Now the marketing consultant can connect that to the hundred things she must do:
    - align business and marketing strategies/goals
    - create programs and messages by target by product/offering
    - determine which messages run on which media
    - leverage the internet beyond basic media options (such as when to use viral campaigns, etc.)
    - set metrics and track all programs, including LEAD GENERATION

    There's more but hopefully you get the point - while a brand consultant is essential, that work is just the starting point for the marketing consultant.


  • Posted by ilan on 8/27/2007 at 12:31 PM Member
    "A brand is a covenant with the consumer. It is what remains from past behavior that allows the consumer to anticipate future behavior. The more consistent the past behavior, the faster the brand can generate the conviction that we as consumers “understand” what it is about, and anticipate what it will or will not do." smart words, I didn't write them, but I believe in them.
    And that is just one definition of what a brand is.
    How to get there and what to do about it, meaning the ACTIONS companies take, are the marketing and sales functions.
    I'm sure many people will scream murder after this comment, but being there and seeing it from a client, ad agency, design, and the academic point of view, I'm ready to battle them all.
  • Posted by Harry Hallman on 8/27/2007 at 12:53 PM Accepted
    "Sales is how you actually engage your customers, generate leads and then make the transaction—how the cash comes in. Through marketing, you want to create awareness."

    To quote the caveman on the TV commercials "WHAT"!

    That is a statement right out of the marketing 101 text book. It doesn’t work that way anymore. Sure, certain people may be responsible for different things, but sales, marketing, branding and public relations are so interconnected that it is hard to assign specific tasks to each. For instance, every one of these tasks is responsible for generating leads.

    We need some new text books.
  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 8/27/2007 at 3:21 PM Member
    marketing is about strategy, how to optimize for sales, to hand-off leads with a propensity to buy

    branding is about connecting company identity with the consumer, putting a face with a promise on the corporate entity

    sales is about closing, making the deal, getting the transaction.

    While the lines do blur, they each have distinctive characteristics.
  • Posted on 8/27/2007 at 3:52 PM Member
    Branding is a very important part of marketing but it is not all of marketing.
    Marketing is Positioning your company and/or products (or services), promotion, pricing, distribution, and decisions about what products you will produce for which segments.
    Branding runs through everything marketing does to build an customer internalized impression of what your company or product stands for.

    So if I understand your question correctly, the type of consultant you choose will depend on whether you are just working on branding because you have the rest of marketing under control, or whether you need the broader help a marketing consultant could provide.
  • Posted on 8/28/2007 at 12:21 PM Author
    Thanks for the feedback to my question on branding vs marketing.

    Based on the responses from each of you + from my experience --it seems like the words marketing + branding are often used to describe the same thing-depending on each person's experience.

    I do think its ironic that branding + marketing which are both ultimately about clarity + consistency have a hard time maintaining their unique point of difference vs one another.
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