“Aren’t they just the same thing?”
I can’t even begin to explain how irritating that question is.
It doesn’t just apply to these two topics either! I’m sure you’ve been asked this at least once in your line of work and it’s usually two things that are very different but have a close relationship and are often confused between people outside the industry.
And that’s what Branding and Marketing are!
They both require creative solutions.
They’re both very broad
They both grow businesses. (Yep, really.)
And to an outsider, it’s not very clear what the difference is!
So what is the difference?
Marketing is what you say it is.
That’s all your paid adverts on Facebook and Google, all your flyers, and local publications. Basically, everything that you say about your business.
Branding is what your customers and potential customers say or think about it.
That’s your loyal customers telling their friends what a great job you did!
Now you might be thinking ‘what about logos? They’re branding right?’
And yeah sure! They’re part of it!
A recent study showed that 75% of people recognise a brand by it’s logo. And 60% recognise it by it’s visual style. (Renderforest, 2021) https://www.renderforest.com/blog/brand-statistics
These elements are part of a brand identity. That’s the bit you need a designer for. But a brand identity alone isn’t a brand.
A brand encompasses everything about how your business is seen by your customers and potential customers.
So that’s your logo and visual style as mentioned before, but also your customer service, how your website looks and works, and how your business speaks! From the type of text you put on flyers and the language you use on social media, to how you answer the phone to speak with potential clients!
Branding is huge!
And marketing can stop. Maybe it’s the end of a campaign or maybe you’ve decided to pause an ad because you’re not getting the results you wanted.
There’s no pause button for branding.
It happens 24/7, 365 days a year.
So, you might be wondering, how come we see more efforts put into marketing than branding?
One word.
ROI
(Well, 3 letters… But you get my point)
You can see the ROI of most marketing, especially digital marketing. Every ad platform shows you exactly how many impressions and clicks you’re getting while also showing you how much you’ve spent, what your cost per click is, and so on!
Because of this, choosing to run a number of marketing campaigns over-investing in branding seems like a no-brainer!
And this is where branding comes in and can sometimes pull the rug from under the feet of business owners.
If you don’t invest in marketing, no marketing happens. Facebook ads don’t run, Google ads don’t run, leaflets don’t get printed, none of it!
But, if you don’t invest in branding, branding still happens.
Like I said earlier, branding is what your customers and potential customers say or think about it.
Brand identity is fascinating. It uses brand strategy and combines it with logo design, web design, graphic design, and more to create a visual style that shows your business exactly the way you want to be seen.
With a brand identity, we can influence the way customers and potential customers see our businesses.
However, without it, we’re leaving them to make their own opinions.
I mentioned earlier that we can see the ROI of marketing in all the figures provided by marketing apps or software. And while we can’t measure the ROI of branding with figures like reach or conversions we can see it in other ways.
Firstly, a strong brand creates a bond with a customer. It generates something we call brand loyalty.
Brand loyalty means your customers are more likely to buy from you more often in repeat business, more likely to recommend you to a friend, and more likely to spend a little bit more on what you’re offering!
7 in 10 customers will buy from brands they trust (Adobe, 2021)
43% of people spend more money on brands they’re loyal to. (Review42, 2022)
Secondly, every modern company that has driven above-average profitable growth has invested heavily in building their brand. Even in B2B, the top 10 brands with the best customer connections had a 31% greater revenue growth over 3 years compared to the 10 lowest brands.
And lastly, building a strong brand can eventually act as a barrier to potential competition.
Don’t believe me? Give me one good reason why you wouldn’t start a cola company! You wouldn’t even dream of it because the two biggest brands have that industry in a chokehold!
Now I’m not saying completely scrap your marketing plans and only invest in branding!
What I’m saying is businesses should be looking to invest in branding as well as their marketing.
That way you’ll be able to command the authority needed for people to buy from you and keep them coming back for more.
Now I’d like to hear from you!
Have you invested in your branding? If so, why? If not, why not?
If this post got you thinking about your branding, I’m giving away a free eBook about the most common mistakes people make in their branding and how to fix them. You can click here to get your copy today!
The post Branding vs Marketing: What’s the Difference? (And Should You Care?) appeared first on Wilson Design & Marketing.]]>
So, without any clients, I did what everyone said I should do. I set up a website with my work and began doing some self-set projects to try and improve my skills. And that’s where I was for a while. With literally no work coming in, a website full of mostly self-set projects and some skills that slowly, but surely I was getting better at.
Towards the end of 2020 things started to pick up a bit. I had some regular work coming in from my brother as I started work helping out with the UI/UX side of a white label virtual conferencing platform he created. UI/UX wasn’t really something I had done much of before but doing it on a regular basis I realized how much I enjoyed it. It was at that point that I began to expand my horizons. When you start out freelancing the most common thing you will hear is that you need to “niche down” or “specialize in one thing” and that’s what I tried to do. I became very focused on branding and learnt a lot about that area because it was something that I was passionate about and enjoyed. But the truth is that branding work is hard to come by! Whether that’s a result of me being inexperienced or a result of the financial impact of COVID-19 or a bit of both but clients have been difficult to find. Because of this and the work, I have been able to do I have now expanded my services. I now offer Branding, Ui/Ux, Marketing, and I have recently been developing my skills using Webflow which I hope to be able to offer in the near future as well.
For a while, I was really shy about what I was doing. Telling as few people as possible what I wanted to do almost out of embarrassment. I was hiding behind a name (Digital Guerila) and trying almost to shy away from what I was doing. But that’s not who I am, and for a while, it left me feeling quite down. In a world where everyone is so concerned about what people have to say I decided I’d had enough. So I’m changing my approach
Hi, my name is Matt, and over the next few months, I am going to share my journey as I try to make a living freelancing as a graphic designer.
The post Starting from Scratch appeared first on Wilson Design & Marketing.]]>Visual Identity and Brand Identity
Visual Identity and Brand Identity are not the same thing. A visual identity is part of a brand identity.
A Brand Identity covers all aspects of a brand including the non visual elements like brand voice, brand promise, copy guidelines etc.
So what are the elements of a visual identity?
Typography
Typography is the way the text and fonts look for the brand. Typography covers the fonts that will be used for elements like headings and body copy.
Colour Palette
A colour palette is is a selection of colours that cover the brand traits and attributes while playing a big role on the look and feel. The colours will be used for every visual element of the brand and are usually divided A colour palette is generated with colour theory in mind so that the colours have the desired impact on the target audience.
Imagery
Imagery offers guidance on the types of images used in a visual identity in alignment with the brand. Imagery also offers guidance on videos as well as any mascots or spokespeople used that represent the brand.
Logo and Brand Assets
The Logo and brand assets are at the heart of a visual identity. The logo is the symbol of the brand that distinguishes it from others. It is often the part of the visual identity that represents the brand the best.
The brand assets are physical objects that contribute to a brand’s visual identity. They include elements like business cards, letterheads etc.
Advertising and Marketing
Advertising is where businesses reach out to customers using their visuals, often in the form of flyers, brochures, tv advertising and more. The visual elements of advertising have to clearly identify the brand as well as attempting to persuade and entertain viewers.
Digital Design
Digital Design is the point where customers get to interact with a visual identity. Digital Design covers apps and websites and must be designed to keep aligned with a visual identity as well as making the platform easy to navigate for the user.
If you’re looking for a new brand identity or would like to know more about brand identity, feel free to get in touch.
The post What is a Visual Identity? appeared first on Wilson Design & Marketing.]]>
Branding is something incredibly unique and incredibly special. The way it joins both the creative worlds and the business worlds is unparalleled. Every business owner knows from the day they start their business that they need to have a logo. In some case it’s all business owners think about. And sometimes, business owners make the mistake of getting a logo before they even know what their business does!
But branding isn’t just a logo. It is so much more than that. Branding can cover everything from how your flyers look to how the copy on your website reads. In a world where we are information rich and time strained the population tends to make its decisions on products or services not based on a list of features and fancy bells and whistles, but on cost and, perhaps more importantly, brand loyalty.
Brand loyalty is everywhere. Everyone could easily make a list of 4/5 perhaps even more brands that they are loyal to and these lists will vary from person to person. Not because any brands are bad, this variety in brand loyalty is purely down to the fact that a brand means something completely different to different people. As Jeff Bezos says “your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” This quote is, in my opinion the best reflection of what a brand actually is. Although you may think (and probably some brand designers and strategists are guilty of thinking this as well) that your brand is a sum of a company’s visual identity, logo, colour palette etc. The fact is, that the brand is the impact all of these have on your customers vision of your company.
Apple is the perfect example of brand loyalty. They use their clean and sophisticated brand strategy to appeal to people of different views and beliefs. Buying an iPhone or an iPad is not just buying a smartphone or a tablet. It’s joining a lifestyle movement. Even the Android users will agree with me on that!
So why do companies need branding? Without any sort of branding it would be almost impossible to identify a brand. Companies would be unable to stand out from their competitors and would sink away! Without branding there would be no ‘brand promise’, the unspoken agreement made between company and customer that makes the customers know exactly the type of quality they will be getting from the company. Without the unspoken brand promise companies like Apple or Samsung would be unable to consistently sell their products year after year the way that they do.
In short, branding creates an emotional connection between the company and their clients/customers. Without it customers can get left behind, and companies can never truly appeal to their target market. Your brand is an emotional relationship, and it should be looked after like one as well.
The post Can Branding Truly Help Businesses Grow? appeared first on Wilson Design & Marketing.]]>