There seems to be a lot of confusion on the differences of marketing and brand management. They both play a key role in the development of a brand but there is a distinct difference between the two. Today you’ll learn about the key distinctions between marketing and brand management and how they can immensely benefit your company.
What is Brand Management?
For starters a brand is what consumers perceive your business to be. A brand encompasses everything from a logo, color scheme, products and/or services to the overall impression it leaves with people. This impression varies from how they think or talk about the brand to what they associate the brand with. If a brand is created intentionally it has the power to make your business stand out, increase demand for your product and/or service and grow customer loyalty.
However, brand management is the constant maintenance of this brand identity. Brand Managers ensure that all communication, content, products, events, and stylistic elements are in conjunction with your ideal branding. Brand management is basically the blueprint for building desired brand equity. It gives the rest of the departments and teams across your organization the research, and strategies to build rapport with customers. When executed right, it ensures that everything from digital to physical products, and human interactions are on-brand. Developing a solid relationship with the target demographic is essential with brand management.
What is Marketing Management?
Marketing is putting that brand management blueprint into action. Marketing management is the process of decision making, planning, and execution on marketing aspects of a company. As defined by the Institute of Marketing Management in England “Marketing Management is the creative management function which promotes trade and employment by assessing consumer needs and initiating research and development to meet them. It coordinates the resources of production and distribution of goods and services, determines and directs the total efforts required to sell profitably to the ultimate user.”
According to Philip Kotler, “Marketing Management is the art and science of choosing target markets and building profitable relationships with them. Marketing management is a process involving analysis, planning, implementing and control and it covers goods, services, ideas and the goal is to produce satisfaction to the parties involved.” Based on these definitions, we can agree that marketing management is the process of management of marketing programs for achieving organizational goals and objectives.
Benefits of Brand vs Marketing Management
There are many benefits to both marketing and brand management and together are vital for a strong, thriving company. Branding is what your business believes in, why it exists, and how consumers feel about your overall business, services, and products. It promotes loyalty and customer retention. There’s far greater ROI in keeping an existing customer than recruiting a new one, and a powerful brand idea can optimize your marketing budget. Another major benefit of brand management is the great appeal and differentiation it brings to a business. Buyers see a difference between your offerings compared to your competitors, and ultimately choose you.
Marketing management benefits a company by building awareness on a business’s products and services. It also involves promoting and protecting the brand. All messages about a company is part of the marketing. This encompasses social media interactions, customer service, personal relationships, print materials, websites, social media pages, and anything that contains your brand imagery. Overall marketing management is important because it meets the need to develop strategies of distribution to reduce cost and increase profit.
If you find yourself needing help with branding or marketing management please reach out to our team here at Brand Iron. We will happily bring your business goals to fruition. Review our services and let us know how we can be of assistance.
CEO | Brand Champion
Michael Doyle has been changing the face of Brand Marketing for over two decades. He built a tech-based advertising agency, DNA Advertising, into a multi-million dollar company. Michael sold the company as part of a national IPO in 2000. Michael founded Brand Iron in 2002 and has since lent his expertise to hundreds of other businesses in dozens of industries around the world.
