Brand and Product Marketing — a Guide

The two sides of the same coin are product marketing and brand marketing.

However, the difference between the two is remarkably clear-cut. While products are tangible things that you can exchange for cash, brands are the embodied identities of the businesses that sell them.

Despite working toward the same objective—creating an organization’s brand in the market—you will frequently observe both departments in a company sparring with one another over who should get the spotlight or, perhaps more appropriately, the larger share of the budget.

If you’re one of those people who’s still unsure of how the two of them differ from one another and how each one benefits the company, we’ve got you covered. In today’s guide, we’ll look at the differences between brand vs product marketing.

However, before we can look at the differences between brand vs product marketing, let’s take a look at each of them one by one, shall we?

What Is Brand Marketing

Building your company’s reputation, increasing its credibility, and winning over customers takes time and effort. Successful branding will aid in setting your business apart from rivals. Clear values communication across all of the company’s marketing channels is how branding works.

Building a reputation as a person and creating a brand for a business are very similar concepts. Brand is what we call the significance of a company’s name, logo, or other symbol used to represent it and its goods. When a company uses marketing to establish a brand, they typically try to tie in some favorable characteristics or traits. Some businesses strive to become innovators’ leaders, while others use quality, superior customer service, or affordable prices to differentiate their brands.

A continuous and extensive marketing process is branding. While established businesses work to protect and increase the value of their brands over time, new companies strive to establish a brand as soon as possible.

Creating a powerful brand lays the groundwork for long-term business success. Because a company’s brand identity has an impact on its products, marketing efforts are more successful when it has a strong brand reputation.

Brand marketing, in some ways, entails highlighting your brand while promoting your good or service. Its primary objective is connecting the audience with the brand’s identity, value, and personality. 

By implementing a successful brand marketing strategy, your company can create brands that represent more than just the features of a product.

If executed properly, these campaigns will elicit an emotional response from your target audience, increasing their loyalty and likelihood to do business with you again. 

Brand marketing is more valuable than product marketing because it helps create an emotional connection between the brand and the product.

What Is Product Marketing?

While branding can be challenging to define, product marketing is simpler to explain.

We refer to the process of introducing a new product (or service) to the market and promoting demand and usage as product marketing. Marketers decide on product positioning and the best messages to launch a new product. An effective, well-thought-out product launch is another crucial component of any marketing strategy.

Ensuring that the appropriate people are aware of and comprehend the product is the main objective of efficient product marketing. Even though they might not be prepared to purchase at this time, they can still support a cause.

Product marketing focuses more narrowly than branding does. Product marketers typically oversee a single product or a group of related products. Their efforts are focused on the advantages and qualities of those particular products. The goal of brand marketers, on the other hand, is to change how customers and other stakeholders view the entire business.

A product marketing team’s attention is frequently focused on product launches and the activities necessary to prepare for the introduction of a new product. However, their work also includes a long-term aspect. Marketers must use consistent messaging and communications to drive ongoing sales after a product has been introduced successfully.

Marketers must choose product positioning and message, marketers must launch the product, and the salesperson or customer must be made aware of the product’s benefits. Additionally, it entails developing messaging that appeals to the audience by thoroughly comprehending the target market for the product. Simply put, product marketing is concerned with each step consumers to take to decide whether or not to buy a product. Your product won’t connect with your target market’s needs in the best possible way without it.

Brand Vs Product Marketing: Exploring the Differences

Global brands have traditionally conducted business from the standpoint of product marketing. And the reason for that is their substantial budgets. All forms of advertising, including those on radio, television, and print, are costly. On the other hand, smaller companies and community-based organizations have embraced brand marketing. However, the widespread use of the Internet somewhat altered everything.

Now that businesses of all sizes have more control over how to design online customer experiences, you’ll notice that everyone is experimenting with various approaches. Although in 2016, the pendulum seems to be returning to product marketing for bigger businesses like Coca-Cola.

All other marketing initiatives are guided by the brand values and the messages that convey those values. This doesn’t lessen the value of product marketing or take away from its inventiveness. It simply means that a business’s brand serves as the foundation for all of its marketing initiatives.

The goal of branding and brand messages is frequently to evoke an emotional response in the audience that they will remember. Storytelling is a powerful tool for spreading brand messages. People have an innate ability to recall stories and the emotions they sparked. Companies can bypass the minds and hearts of their target audience by utilizing storytelling in branding.

Particularly when it comes to technology, product marketing is frequently more precise and thorough. However, few prospective customers will commit to memory of each and every feature of a product they are considering buying. They are more likely to recall two or three salient advantages and the sensations they would experience due to owning the product.

While branding most likely created the emotions connected to these benefits, product marketing communicates them. They work together to influence a customer’s purchase choice.

Conclusion

You must be aware by this point that a comprehensive marketing strategy necessitates product and brand marketing coexistence. Both should be perfectly balanced so that no matter what kind of campaign you run, your brand’s personality and the value you provide users are always evident.

We hope our guide on brand vs product marketing was able to clear some of the questions you had. If you have any more questions, let us know!