The Difference Between Branding, Marketing & Selling
Branding Vs Marketing Vs Selling
Branding
Is the feel, is the culture, it’s the vibe attracts your tribe mentality into your inner circle. A business with a strong brand will have people flocking by the masses to identify with you. People will jump any hurdle or bypass any obstacle to be apart of a brand bigger than themselves.
1000 Loyal Members in Your Tribe
The great Steve Jobs understood this with his amazing “Think Different” & “1984” Apple commercials. Steve created a strong Us vs Them divide amongst the Apple community and everyone else. This made us all crave to be identified as unique rather than a boring square conformist. Google did an amazing job as with the emotion evoking “Parisian Love” commercial. It instilled in us the strong emotion of love not just for the couple but for Google as well.
Steve didn’t care about pleasing everyone and your brand shouldn’t either. Your business only needs a tribe of 1000 of the most loyal followers to reach the highest of financial successes. A True Fan as identified by Kevin Kelly. These true fans must 1. Be able to generate you at least $100 of profit every year and 2. You must be able to have a direct relationship with them. Reason 2 is exactly why we stress here at TAMTAMS the importance of personality brand development.
Create A Personality Brand
With video it allows you to immediately communicate with your audience by the masses through all the Social Media channels out there today. Read more about the Importance of Videos from Andre. A personality brand allows you as a business owner to stop hiding behind your business curtains and fully express your beautiful self with all your flaws and perfections. Transparency, it is amazing asset for any business on social media, it allows us to see all with video and allows your tribe to directly communicate with you through these channels. If people like you they will like your business and people buy from people they like don’t they?
I have seen business increase their ROI by 30% just by adding a personality brand to their business. Some people will not like you GREAT, forget them, your not here to be a passive push-over everybody pleaser. If you really cannot get behind the camera or for some reason are extremely disliked, find a relatable, charismatic co-worker to be your voice for your brand.
Ferrari
Do not fail to do this or you will see your brand equity quickly diminish and thats because there is no uniqueness in joining your inner circle if you let everybody in. Our partners at Ferrari Québec , whenever we deliver them a qualified lead who wants to own a brand new Ferrari they must go down a further qualification process. That’s because Ferrari chooses who they want to join their inner circle. Ferrari doesn’t sell these luxury machines to just anyone who qualifies financially.
They will only ever sell a piece of art work to an individual who’s morals, ethics, and character match those of Ferrari and Ferraris tribe. Those who pursue, are patient, and enjoy the chase will deservedly own a Ferrari. If you don’t match up they’ll recommend you to go buy a Lambo (those guys are real class acts).
Ferrari understands branding and the importance on creating a rich culture which is exactly why Ferrari is the greatest brand in the world.
Solely focus on your fan base who already admire you. Serve them like Kings & Queens and they will admire you a god. With a strong brand most businesses will never need Marketing or Selling. Make it difficult to join the circle, create a unique culture people are proud to be apart of and you will organically build a tribe of loyal followers hungry for your next big bang.
Marketing
Marketing is all about values and aligning those values with others. It’s about holding your potential clients hand and leading them down a frictionless path that points directly to your business for a smooth customer acquisition process. Contrary to branding and selling it isn’t what you say or how you say it but where you’ve said it. It’s the vehicle to get your message across to the masses.
The Vehicles in Marketing
There are many vehicles nowadays to get your message out there with. Referrals, Events, Print, Radio, Tv, and Online Media. As we have consistently evolved our marketing means there is no better time then today to be the captain of your marketing ship. Although there are many vehicles some are extremely beneficial compared to others. Still today though I see business owners stuck in the past. If your a business owner still using radio, TV or print you are losing.
Now while I do believe that being in at many places at once will help you with your marketing efforts. It is not financially feasible for small to medium sized businesses to be advertising on these types of platforms. Yet for some reason out of all the options many Montréal business owners tend to spend their time and budgets here…
Lead Your Clients Down A Frictionless Road
If marketing is about leading your clients down a frictionless road to your business you wouldn’t lead them to your business blindfolded would you?
Well thats exactly what you are doing with radio, print, and TV. You have no idea what new customers came to your business as a direct result from these platforms. Then to be able to generate the same amount of sales you’ve received for a certain period you would have to keep spending the same amount of money to hopefully get the same traction you think achieved from those platforms. It’s a guessing game I’m not playing and neither should you.
When TV ads play the first thing we do is grab our phones. Radio ads come on we immediately change the channel. Nobody reads the flyers your un-enthused employee is handing out and newspaper and magazine would be good for targeting Traditionalist (may they rest in piece). Stop sending your message where there is too much friction.
Open All The Doors of Your Business With Social Media
Now events are pretty cool for generating traction and referrals are really great for business too but NOTHING beats the Power of Social Media Marketing and Digital Marketing. If your going to make an event your certain to create the event on Facebook first. When you want to expand your word of mouth marketing why not show off happy customer testimonials across all your social media platforms to destroy any false beliefs someone may have before buying your product or service?
Every Social Media platform is like a door of opportunity you could be opening to be leading a potential client into. You want to open up every single door to make the customer acquisition process as silky smooth as possible. Facebook, Linkedin, Google, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram are all vehicles to be sending your message across in. Amazing for an omni-present marketing strategy. However do not disrespect these channels and become a digital flyer person!!
Respect the Online Sales Process
Besides Social Media Marketing, SEM/SEO strategies coincide nicely with Social Media. Nobody goes on Social Media to buy your product or service, they go on Social Media to be entertained.
However Social Media provides you the perfect platform to spark interest in potential clients through Edutainment, Education/Entertainment. Just make sure to create Thumb-Stopper worthy content.
Then when the seed has been planted when users decide to search for your business or see what you do on YouTube thanks to your authority ranking SEO (Search Engine Optimization) & SEM (Search Engine Marketing) you will be able to create the silkiest of smoothest online buying processes. Understand that online you are transitioning potential clients from a cold audience to warm audience to a FIREY SMOKEN HOT audience where they are hungry and ready to buy from you.
By respecting this online sales process you will be able to engage users to know, like, and trust you. Facebook and other Social Media platforms are a push while Google is a pull and both must be executed effectively for a slip-and-slide online sales process.
Selling
The art of persuasion. If you do not know how to sell your product or service I would quickly recommend you find someone who has mastered the art of persuasion because selling is vitally important for you to stay afloat.
Sales Tactics
Selling is a masterful tool in any business owners tool belt. Some will tell you to mirror others , some will tell you it’s all about objective handling, some say to talk less and some say to keep talking until they tell you to shut up or until you make them feel so incredibly awkward they have to buy from you. In any case there are many tactics with sales but I always believe to always be your complete authentic self.
I do believe if you have the conviction with a product or service that you are sure will be helpful to the consumer to do anything you can do to sell it to them. Weather it means mirroring them, talking too much, story telling or asking too many questions. Selling is exactly this but never ever manipulate people into thinking they need something they don’t or worse of all manipulating ourselves into thinking they truly need something don’t. With selling we should never 1. Sell anything to anyone if we see they truly wouldn’t need it or can’t afford it, 2. Ever sell more of anything then anyone actually needs.
Sale to Others in their Tongue
I am also a big believer in psychologically framing. Never manipulating but organizing truth. What to say to certain people to further persuade them in making the decision to buy. For example, if your selling suits, communicate to high schoolers and tell them how fresh to death they will look for their prom, tell university students how they will stand out from everyone else in their presentations, and tell the groom who is happily engaged how he will look as every bit of a man his fiancee always imagined he would be at their wedding. This is ethical selling, it’s the same reason we change languages to communicate with others in their native tongue, it’s the same reason why talk to our grandfather differently then we would our niece.
Ponder It
Their are many differences between Branding, Marketing & Selling. Ponder this, if you have a strong brand people want to be apart of but you don’t know how to sell your product or service why would you need marketing? If a business has a strong marketing presence that is seen everywhere and they have a sales team full of stone cold faced killers… be care full you may be dealing with scheme here. However, if your business has a strong brand and you know how to sell the values you bring to the community… well the last piece of the puzzle is your missing is Marketing.
If your ready to start marketing your business effectively grab your Free Marketing Analysis where we show you how to optimize your current digital footprint, tools to use, and ways to brand & market your story to Montréal.
I am extremely passionate about Digital Marketing and Storytelling. My articles will help you become a defined online marketer with my latest case strategies and experiments for you to implement and replicate for your PPC, SEO and Analytic strategies.
