What is Brand Marketing? Distinguishing Brand Marketing from Trade Marketing

In today’s competitive landscape, alongside revenue growth, brand development has become a primary objective for many businesses. This article delves into what Brand Marketing entails and highlights the fundamental differences between Brand Marketing and Trade Marketing.

1. What is Brand Marketing?

Brand Marketing focuses on building a brand to distinctly develop its identity and embed its uniqueness in the minds of customers. This approach encompasses generating ideas, creating communication strategies, and producing advertisements across various media platforms to capture consumer attention and affection towards a product or brand.

For example, consider Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign, which personalizes its products by featuring popular names on bottles. This strategy not only enhances brand recognition but also fosters emotional connections with consumers.

Brand Management as the Foundation

Brand management can be seen as the foundational step in marketing activities. Therefore, brand-building efforts should precede and support all marketing initiatives.

Further Reading: What is Marketing? An A-Z Guide to Marketing

2. What Does Brand Marketing Include?

Brand Marketing comprises four main components:

2.1 Identifying Potential Customers

Identifying and outlining the profile of potential customers is the first step in any marketing campaign. A crucial element in customer recognition is “Insight,” which refers to the deeper understanding of customer psychology that can influence decisions. As the saying goes, possessing customer insights can account for up to 50% of a campaign’s success, as it allows marketers to accurately assess customer behavior.

For instance, a skincare brand like Dove leverages customer insights to address issues related to self-esteem and body image, tailoring its campaigns to resonate with its audience.

2.2 Developing a Brand Marketing Strategy

Not every marketing effort yields high results; thus, businesses must establish a Brand Marketing strategy. This strategy serves as a guiding compass for subsequent actions, directing the delivery of products and services to the appropriate customer segments.

Key components of developing a Brand Marketing strategy include:

• Setting Specific Goals: Each business may pursue one or multiple marketing objectives based on its vision.
• Creating a Brand Portfolio: Depending on the diversity of products/services, a business may manage one or several different brands.
• Brand Positioning: This involves a series of efforts aimed at establishing a unique place in the minds of consumers.

2.3 Implementing the Brand Marketing Strategy

Once the Brand Marketing strategy is developed, businesses must implement it and evaluate its effectiveness. Brand Marketing strategies can be executed through various avenues, but they primarily revolve around three main pillars: product/service development, public relations, and brand effectiveness.

To successfully achieve these three tasks, marketers need to conduct thorough market analysis, understand customer psychology, keep abreast of market trends, manage the production process proactively, allocate resources wisely (prioritizing critical factors), collaborate with different functional departments within the company, and leverage external social organizations.

For instance, Nike effectively implements its brand strategy by continuously innovating its products while fostering strong connections with customers through targeted advertising campaigns.

2.4 Measuring Brand Marketing Strategy Results

Measuring the outcomes of marketing strategies is vital for adjusting resources and processes to align with current realities. Marketers cannot ascertain the effectiveness of their strategies without quality assessment procedures.

In practice, evaluating Brand Marketing results occurs at various stages of the strategy’s execution, enabling timely identification of discrepancies and misalignments with practical circumstances. This ongoing assessment allows marketers to make necessary adjustments without adversely affecting overall results, ensuring that the Brand Marketing strategy progresses steadily.

3. The Difference Between Brand Marketing and Trade Marketing

While Brand Marketing helps a brand succeed in the minds of consumers, Trade Marketing focuses on achieving success at the point of sale. Trade Marketing aims to convey the true value of a brand through activities such as market research, sales efforts, customer care, and promotional communications. Consequently, this fosters brand recall and loyalty among customers, driving product distribution and sales growth.

Distinguishing Features

The primary responsibilities of Trade Marketing involve determining retail points, enhancing product distribution to wholesalers and retailers, persuading them to carry the company’s products, managing distribution networks, and strategizing sales-related marketing activities. Trade Marketing also includes forecasting new products and devising promotional plans to boost product sales.

For example, Procter & Gamble effectively uses Trade Marketing to ensure its products are readily available in retail locations frequented by target customers, which increases the likelihood of purchase decisions.

Despite their differences, Brand Marketing and Trade Marketing are closely interconnected within the overall strategy of a business. For a company to thrive, it cannot afford to overlook either of these critical tools