Digital marketing is leveraging technology with the aid of the internet to sell products and services. It involves the use of social media and other digital media platforms as tools to advertise or sell these products or services. Brand management is putting your brand in a light that improves the way your customers perceive your brand. The goal of this is to build loyalty, trust, equity, and awareness.
There are many differences between Digital Marketing and Brand Management, however, they work together to achieve a common goal, which is to sell products and services.
Let us dive deeper into both of them, so we can understand how they both function independently from each other, but also how they are designed to work together seamlessly towards a common goal for your brand.
First, What Is Digital Marketing?
Like we discussed before, digital marketing is leveraging the use of technology and the internet to sell products or services.
Digital marketing is similar to traditional marketing, except you are not communicating with one person at a time, you are communicating your services or products to a lot of people at the same time online, without seeing them face to face.
To reach the customers you need to sell your products to; you would need something called assets. Assets are the mediums through which you can reach your audience online, and there are quite a lot of them.
Logos
You may not know this, but your logo is one of the most important digital marketing assets you have. People see your logo the same time they see your brand name. Now, your logo should tell them enough about your brand and the products you sell or the services you offer.
Your logo should not confuse your customers. Instead, it should ease them into what to expect from your brand. It is expedient that your logo markets your services easily and effectively. And because your logo is the face of your brand, it makes it the most important digital marketing asset you have.
For more on creating a logo and brand identity for your business, check out our complete in-depth guide on How to Create a Brand Identity.
Blog Posts
This is one easy way to get people to be exposed to your products and services. People are always searching for information about products and services they need or are interested in, and this is a great opportunity to provide potential customers with the information they are searching for, all while exposing them to your products and services.
Another method of doing this is writing ‘How-to’s’ related to your products or services and place a call-to-action at the end of your blog posts. That way, they can not only find your blog posts on ‘How-to’s but also become aware of your products and services and end up responding to the call-to-action at the end of your blog posts.
Product or Service Description
If your product or service is one that is not very popular, you might need a little more help in getting across to your prospective customers.
A description of your service or product that is both interesting and engaging will get people intimated with what your products or services are about.
When doing this, you have to find a way to bring both the important details and the interesting details together to make this possible. When you do this, you get people interested. Because let’s be honest, no one would sit down for minutes reading a technical product description, they want something that would interest them. Very few people in the world are “nerdy” enough to read a product description without interesting details earnestly.
Images
Because people have a love for visual arts, the graphic designing industry is one of the fastest-growing parts of digital marketing. You may not be able to get people to read a long post on social media. That is pretty difficult, especially when it is not inclined towards drama. However, an image should be able to grab their attention almost immediately, selling everything that needs to be sold within the seconds their eyes are fixated on it.
It takes a certain level of finesse and understanding of digital marketing to pull this off by utilizing this asset properly. This is because everything about the image matters, from the color to the words, to the font used. Unless you are good at graphic designing and can successfully convey a message through images, it is best to leave this to the professionals.
Social Media
Now, this is an asset that is at the fingertips of everyone, yet not a lot of people have found the perfect way to navigate this asset. Almost everyone is on social media, and the moment you can find a way to reach these people with your products and services, and while attracting their interest, you have hit a goldmine. And social media, from a marketing perspective, is a gold mine.
This should help you see that all that is concerned with digital marketing, is either to create brand awareness or to sell products and services. Whatever is done in digital marketing is geared towards one of these two things.
Each of the assets listed above involves making use of the internet. In using these assets, you are reaching a larger audience, instead of the more traditional person to person marketing.
There are so many ways you can employ the usage of these assets to get what you want from digital marketing. Understanding them and understanding how to use them is the first step.
Now that we have covered the part about digital marketing, let us move on to brand management.
Now, How Is That Different From Brand Management?
What brand management does is build and maintain your brand reputation consistently. When your brand’s reputation drops, a lot of things could go wrong.
Now, many businesses do not pay attention to their branding as much as they should, because they think all they need to do is sell their products or services. But these companies might not know is that branding is what determines if they sell a product or service or not.
Let us look at a relatable example.
Coca Cola is an awesome cola drink, but so are other cola drinks in the world and people are aware of this. But some people would rather not drink cola at all, than drink a brand different from coca-cola. Any product Coca Cola as a brand puts out into the market is trusted by people, because Coca-cola has built their reputation to the point where their customers will take anything coca-cola tells them or give them without a second thought. Loyalty and trust have been established.
Establishing loyalty, trust, equity, and awareness is what brand management does.
Loyalty
As time goes on, different people will copy your idea, and sometimes they’ll do it better. If they did the same thing, they would not be so much of a threat. And that’s why they aim to do it better.
When a brand is doing the same thing you do, but better, you are at risk of losing your customers to them. But when you have gained brand loyalty in the market, people would prefer to buy from you than from your competitors. That’s why there will be Coca-Cola drinkers who will never drink Pepsi and vice versa.
Trust
If your customers cannot trust your brand, then it will be hard for them to be loyal to your brand. You must keep trying to build trust between your brand and the customer. Be transparent, be reliable, let them know that they can trust you with their money, and you will deliver the quality products and services they paid for.
Equity
If your brand does not promote fairness for everyone, you lose trust as your brand will then be accused of bias. When your brand has lost trust, loyalty will fly out of the window.
When you have lost all three of these things in your brand, you won’t be able to run a successful brand, and this is where brand management comes in.
Brand management builds brand, gives it a facelift, and makes sure it is portraying all three of the qualities listed above. Note that, one cannot work without the other.
It is also the job of the brand management to create visibility for the brand, to create awareness. Without awareness, there will be no one to buy your product or service.
Stages Of Brand Management
Let us look at the stages of brand management.
Definition
Brand Management starts with the definition of the brand. When you are picking your brand name, what goes on in your mind? What do you want your name to represent? Is it a legacy you want to leave? These questions are part of the early stages of brand management. It is also at this point that the idea of a brand is established, the values the brand will live by, and the code by which the brand operates.
Monitoring
Has the brand lived up to its prior establishment? Have the values changed to suit the time and current needs, or has the values changed because those who should keep up with it have changed? Are there issues with the customers? Are they losing trust? Is the public image still good? Does the brand need a PR strategist? All of these questions are asked all over and again because at this stage is where they find out if there are problems.
Maintenance
Now, this is a hard part. A brand has already been established with values and all. This image has to be maintained at all costs. Brand management, at this point, will be tested. An employee can make a comment on social media that is coming back to hurt the brand by virtue of associating the brand with the employee. Now brand management has to swing into immediate PR mode and save the reputation of the brand.
Brand Management is a very broad topic. We have not even scratched the surface. But one thing we can agree on is the fact that brand management is what helps the brand be the brand and stay the brand. If the brand management is incompetent, the brand suffers.
Now, while brand management is very important, it will be unnecessary to keep promoting a brand that has no service to offer.
Working together
Brand Management and digital marketing working together is the only way a product or services can be sold.
Whatever service you are offering or product you are selling using digital marketing; you would need to depend on your brand’s reputation to sell this. The better your brand’s reputation, the better your sales.
Branding is definitively who you are and what you are offering. Also, branding sets things in motion for the sales. It makes it possible for sales. Digital marketing sells the products after the branding has laid the groundwork for this.
Now, think of this as a step by step procedure. To run a successful business, you need three steps: you need a strategy, and you need action then repeat.
Your strategy is your brand management. That’s what sets the things in motion. Your action is digital marketing.
After the strategy has been laid out, it is now on your ability to leverage the use of technology to sell your products or services.
The moment you get your products or services sold, and customers are reviewing, it is now back on the brand management to maintain this trust and loyalty, and more importantly, to strategize.
Conclusion
The list above, as long as you can work your way through the usage of these assets, then you can sell your product and service.
So, again, yes. Digital marketing and Brand management are different. There are huge differences between the two, as pointed out above. However, they need to work together for the common goal of the brand, which is to achieve results.
Digital marketing needs good brand management because there are people out there who are doing the same thing and have more followers than you do. If your brand is not able to inspire trust and loyalty, then you will not be able to sell your products or services.
