What Is the difference between a marketing agency and a branding agency?

Branding creates a positive image of your company to present to the world. Marketing capitalises on your brand to grow your audience and sales through various marketing and advertising campaigns.

A branding agency will analyse your company, its position in the market and the core values driving everything you do. They will create assets such as your logo, colour palette, typography, tone of voice and style, and packaging design which reflects your brand. The process can also involve creating a brand name, tagline and website.

A marketing agency will use the branding you already have in place and develop a strategy to reach your target audience. Marketing can involve various techniques such as pay-per-click advertising (PPC), social media, TV and radio advertising, email marketing, banner ads, offline marketing, and other creative ideas.

Each campaign will have a goal, such as increasing awareness of a new product, and will work over a finite amount of time before the goals and tactics change.

What is the importance of branding?

Every interaction with potential and existing customers needs to happen within your branding guidelines to reinforce your brand and its positive image.

Your branding should be instantly recognisable and memorable and distinguish you from your competitors. Your branding assets align with your brand definitions, core values, and ethos. Social media makes it very easy to share a good or bad experience; we’ve probably all done it at some point.

Negativity toward your brand can also affect your marketing efforts. Strong branding helps build your customer base, whereas poor branding can hurt your bottom line.

What is the importance of marketing?

Having a strong brand and great products is meaningless if you don’t have any customers, which is a problem marketing aims to solve. A marketing agency will identify your target audience and find ways to promote your company to them.

Marketing isn’t an exact science; an agency will test various strategies, analyse what works, and tweak campaigns accordingly.

Sometimes an agency will need to use its creative genius and try something completely different. And while certain techniques will work repeatedly, campaigns need to change and evolve with fresh ideas to avoid your marketing becoming stale and putting off customers. Poor marketing, such as an ill-considered campaign that causes unintentional offence, can mar good branding and lose potential sales. Marketing done well will boost your customer base and sales.

Do I need a branding or marketing agency?

If your business requires help with its image or increasing sales, you will need both or a full-service agency that can offer both services. If you don’t have any branding, are unsure of your brand, or need an update, you will need to employ the services of a branding agency.

A marketing agency can offer insights into why your current marketing isn’t working or how to improve it and provide you with new ideas and a tactical plan of action.

If you don’t have any marketing in place, a marketing agency will be your best bet to get started. Both branding and marketing can seem like a considerable expense at the time; however, they are both essential to ensuring the long-term success of your business. Your branding project will be a one-off until it requires an update to give it a refresh, whereas marketing will be ongoing.

Can I do my own branding and marketing?

Nothing is stopping you from doing these yourself or using your in-house team. However, if your branding or marketing is poorly executed, the cost to your business could be high.

Some of the benefits of using an agency include the following:

• An agency has a dedicated team with a lot of skill and experience and will keep up to date with current trends.
• An agency won’t have any affinity to your branding and will be able to give objective advice and opinions.
• Handling projects in-house can often mean they fall behind on deadlines – an agency will be committed to producing your project on time.
• It will be most cost-effective in the long run rather than devoting valuable staff hours to the project.