Role of Marketing, Advertising, and Branding in Business
Traditional Advertising Vs Online Advertising
Traditional advertising means the advertising methods that use print media, radio, TV, billboards, etc. With the evolution of the internet and the development of cheap PC and other handheld devices, internet-based advertising became very popular. The print media became popular after the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. When the radio was invented, print media did not die. The print media did not die even when the TV and other mass media platforms like Cinema evolved. Now, we have the internet, which is a very popular medium but we also have newspapers, radio, TV, and Cinema. Traditional advertising will never die, it will continue to live. First of all, the internet is not easily available everywhere, especially in Asia and Africa, secondly, you need electricity to power your devices (mobile and computer) in order to use the internet. Electricity is still scarce in many Asian and African countries. In the US, more people watch Youtube compared to network TV but there are still a lot of TV stations. The reason why these TV stations are still surviving is that they still generate revenue through advertising. There are even newspapers that are being printed regularly because they get ads.
Marketing and Advertising
Digital marketing basically means internet-based marketing, or online marketing to be precise. You can do digital marketing on multiple platforms, for instance, search engines, social media, email, newsletters, blogs, websites, etc. These digital marketing platforms use different kinds of marketing methods, for instance, cost per click (CPC), cost per impression or cost per milie (CPM), cost per action (CPA), etc. When you do CPA, you will be paying the advertising platform for every action performed which can be a product sale, lead generation, sign-ups, etc. When you do CPM, you will be paying a certain amount for every 1000 ad impressions, for instance, you will pay $x when your ad is displayed 1000 times. When you do CPC, you will be paying for every click. In other words, you will pay for each click on your ads. If you want to do digital marketing, you need to understand a lot of things, not just the marketing methods, you also need to understand how the platform works when you are doing your marketing. For instance, if you want to do social media marketing, you need to understand how these platforms work. What kind of marketing you should do depends on your budget and your product.
Branding and Advertising
It is true that branding and advertising are two different things, and branding means telling your customers and consumers who you are, whereas advertising means showing your customers what you have got and what you are offering. However, the ultimate aim of branding and advertising is the same, to sell your products and services, generate revenue, and build your business. let's say you are an XYZ company. When you are doing branding for your company you will tell your potential customer what your company is all about, you will do this by introducing your logo, your banner, and your mascot. You will tell your customers what kind of products and services you are aiming to lunch, and what kind of benefits the people will have when they use your products and services. Now, let's say you have a product called ABC. When you are doing advertising, you will connect with your potential customers and showcase your products, you will inform your customers about the unique selling proposition of your product, and you will tell them about the quality of your product, and how the product is better than the existing products in the market, you will tell your customers about the benefits of using your product.
Importance of Branding
Branding plays a huge role in new businesses and products because this will introduce the business and products to the potential customer, it will make the product and business popular among the potential customers, and it will build a strategy to generate sales in the future. Without branding, new products and businesses will have no chance to survive in the market. Not just for new businesses and products, branding also plays a huge role for established companies and products to remain in the market. That's the reason why big brands continue to spend a lot of money on branding. You will see big brands sponsoring big events, big brands running ads on multiple platforms, big brands hiring big celebrities to endorse their products or making well-known figures their brand ambassadors, etc. While new businesses might not be able to spend a lot of money on branding, they still have to do branding to connect with their potential customers. Whether you have realized it or not, the more a company spends on branding, the better will it perform in the market. Hiring celebrities for endorsing products is considered one of the best methods for branding, especially for new products and businesses.
