I’m going to start from the very basics and give you the breakdown of each individual service. It might seem that they can be similar at times however they all work hand in hand to give you the best exposure to promote your product or service. You need to brand yourself, market your product or service and promote it heavily to be successful. If no one knows you exist how do you expect to turn a profit?
Branding – Your Name, Logo or Trademark. What your audience recognizes and knows you by.
Marketing – The transfer of a product or service from the producer or seller to a buyer or client through advertising, shipping, storing and selling to a particular audience.
Public Relations – The actions of a corporation, store, government or individual in promoting between itself and the public.
I have seen businesses fail due to going in without a marketing strategy. If you build a store tomorrow and it’s not in the greatest location, aside from people that may happen to see it in passing how would you get people into your establishment? Same thing goes for a service that you may have to offer. If you were to start a consulting business tomorrow, how would you promote it and let people know that you have a consulting business and offer that service? Yes, there is guerrilla marketing but that can only go so far. If you don’t know exactly what guerrilla marketing entails it’s a low cost alternative way to promote yourself like flyers, posters, stickers and flash mobs just to name a few. I think guerrilla marketing is great for different events, concerts, and parties!
First things first! Fully understand your product or service and know your target market. Once you have gotten these two things down you can start to create a campaign to get you exposure. Before you start to map out a marketing strategy let’s hope that you have a logo, website, and social media platforms in place. That will be a huge part of the branding portion. Make sure you love your logo, slogan or tagline; this is what people will know you by. There are several taglines that I can say and you can associate the logo and brand with it immediately. I’m Loving It! = McDonald’s | Don’t leave home without it. = Amex | The happiest place on earth = Disneyland | Life’s Good = LG | Just Do It! = Nike | Broadcast Yourself. = YouTube. Do you get my point!
Once you have established your brand and target audience it’s time to start marketing yourself and plan a media launch. Look at all the media outlets you have to choose from. What’s your advertising budget? It can help you decide on TV, print, radio, or online advertising. There is also email blasts, telemarketing, direct sales etc. You can definitely mix and match the marketing mediums you have to choose from. I recommend having a press release on hand to everyone. Be sure to track the responses you get through each method you use. You want to know your ROI (return on investment). Look at what works and what doesn’t and you can alter your campaign to suit your needs. It will be great information to have for future marketing campaigns. I can’t stress this enough, have a good team in place! You can’t do it all by yourself.
So even though Branding, Marketing and PR are similar in some ways they are very different and work hand in hand to successfully promote a person, product or service! I hope this article was helpful. What do you think about the differences between Branding, Marketing and PR? What are you doing to promote yourself, your product or your business? I’d love to know.