Why branding is important in marketing ?

Branding is your strategy, while marketing encompasses your tactical goals.

The most helpful definition I found for distinguishing branding and marketing is this:

“Marketing is what you do, branding is what you are”

Branding is a vital aspect of marketing strategies. Companies are trying hard to build a brand value that is sustainable over a longer period of time. A brand is a name or identity with which the customers can associate them with the company. A brand name will help the manufacturers and products to stand apart from the usual crowd.

A popular brand is generally considered as the product that can easily be recognized by the common masses. A brand name can be built either for the company or for the product. Some of the important aspects that are concentrated while building a better brand are the company or product's logo, symbol and design. People should be able to identify the service or product with any of these features distinctly.

Brand Name – For The Company Or For The Product?

Certain business men would be in a dilemma and will not be sure to develop a brand name for the company or for the product. Developing a brand name is considered to be beneficial as long as it brings in revenue irrespective of the product or the service. However, one has to give a detailed attention when it comes to building a brand.

A company name would stay there in the market for a longer period of time. A company can build several products and release them in a frequent interval of time. Consider the activity of building a brand name for the product. For example, ipod is a very popular name and every other music player in the market was compared to the ipod product. It had a very strong brand name such that it influenced the minds of people to ask for ipod rather than other music players. Apple manufactured these famous digital music players and it created a brand name for the company too. There were too many other products in Apple's shelf. It has got its own brand name too. An important aspect to be seen here is that people have started believing Apple for its quality products. If it is going to launch a television set or a digital set top box, people will still be eager to buy those products.

Consider the case of IBM, Google, Amazon, Cisco. Most of their products have been a massive hit. Irrespective of the products, people still identify them with the company name just because the company's name will be a long lived one. These companies started off their services in a small way and have become the best of the players in the market. It took a considerable amount of time to capture the market share. They have successfully achieved what they wanted. Yes, they have a brand name. Budding sports enthusiasts and athletes feel proud to wear adidas and nike shoes. It gives them a great pleasure to wear their sports jerseys and other sports wear. Branding has got such a potential to influence the customer's thought process and make them emotionally attached to them.