Digital Marketing vs. Digital Branding: How to Use the Right Strategy?

In this day and age, choosing the right type of strategy for your business is truly head-scratching. With so many options available, it is often confusing to know what strategy would work best for your business, whether it is establishing your brand, increasing the net sales, maximizing your customer base, and so on.

If you need to choose between digital branding and digital marketing, which one do you think might be the right strategy for you?

Let us explore the meaning of both the terms and compare the two to understand the difference.

dan-institute-join-page-promo-1

Digital marketing vs. digital branding: The Differences and Similarities

As we all know, digital marketing has gained popularity over the last couple of decades. Businesses marketing their products and services via digital platforms is something that we see and hear about every day. 

Digital marketing includes strategies like content marketing, influencer marketing, social media advertising, search engine optimization, growth hacking, and so on.

These strategies help a business in expanding its customer base, marketing products and services, and increasing conversion rates. Digital marketing courses are prevalent today due to the high use of this marketing strategy.

Digital branding, on the other hand, is a method of gaining brand recognition and customer loyalty. If you are at the first step of the ladder and you want to reach the top, then you require digital branding strategies to get there. Branding strategies like interacting and engaging with customers, building a brand story, establishing digital relationships help in placing your brand in the customer’s subconscious.

This will keep your customers attached and keep them coming back to you. Every business should focus on building a powerful brand to stay afloat in the pool of fierce digital competition.

What are digital marketing and digital branding?

Digital marketing is described as the collection of tools, procedures, and strategies used to aggressively market a product, service, or company. Consider marketing to be the steps you do to interact with your customers and persuade them to purchase your products or services.

In contrast, digital branding is the marketing technique of actively shaping your brand. Branding is the process of defining who you are as a company. It is your mission, your principles, and what distinguishes and distinguishes you. It refers to your major brand features, such as your logo, website, and brand style standards. If marketing is what draws people in for the first time, branding is what keeps them coming back for years to come.

How are digital marketing and digital branding different?

Digital marketing and digital branding are often confused with being the same concepts. Before digital marketing was this advanced and improved, digital branding was a part of digital marketing itself. However, in today’s digital world, digital branding has gained its own individuality, and it is now a completely different aspect. But how are digital marketing and branding different really?

    • Marketing is used to promote your product or service, while branding is for actively forming your brand and who you are. Both require a strategy, and their objectives and results are distinct.
    • Marketing draws a consumer’s attention, digital branding is a way to retain their interest
    • Marketing is good for sales, branding drives recognition and loyalty
    • Marketing strategies depend on other factors and they are periodic. But branding is permanent
    • Branding has an impact on your employees just as much as it does on your target group.
  • Digital marketing seconds digital branding: Digital branding is the first step when it comes to growing your business. You cannot market your product without building a powerful brand.
  • Digital branding strategies are permanent: Digital marketing strategies change with time and the product. But digital branding strategies are there to be followed forever to gain customers’ trust.
  • Digital branding’s impact: Digital branding has just as profound an impact on your team as it has on your customers. A team, when part of an important brand, works harder to bring it to development.

Listen Digital Marketing Webinars That The Digital Marketing Institute Offer

dmi-webinars

Digital marketing webinars essential resources for people who want access to quality marketing content and become successful marketers. Digital Marketing Institute offers practical digital marketing webinars for everyday use. Click here to learn more.

Why is digital branding important for your business?

While marketing claims may refer to “the brand comes first,” in a business context, it’s more like “which is first—marketing or branding?”

Branding always precedes marketing. There is a reason for that. A company can’t be marketed unless a brand has been designed.

Before you decide to use a marketing approach, your branding must be in place. How would you describe your brand? What value or expertise do you want to contribute to the marketplace? What are your primary beliefs? Also, what is your plan to ensure that your target clients are aware of the change?

You should only consider marketing if you have an answer to those questions. Knowing who you are, who your client is, and the best ways to engage with that consumer are all products of having a strong brand.

Amidst the question of digital marketing vs. digital branding, a new question arises regarding the importance of digital branding for your business. How can digital branding strategies help your business grow?

If your goal is to stand out among others, then digital branding is the right strategy for you. Building a powerful brand requires new and innovative strategies that will hook your customers and retain their attention. You need to answer the following questions to come up with effective branding strategies:

  • What makes your customers click on the ads?
  • What makes your brand more attractive?
  • What retains customers’ interests?
  • How to establish effective customer relationships?

After answering the above questions, you will have ground-breaking branding tactics to grow your brand.

digital-branding-meaning

Source

These branding strategies will help you in:

  • Targeting a specific audience on all digital platforms
  • Real-time interaction with customers
  • Better digital relationships
  • Establishing brand awareness
  • Getting and retaining customer’s attention
  • Beating hefty competition
  • Getting customer feedback

How does digital marketing help your business?

What is the role of digital marketing? Well, however different they may be, digital marketing strategies actually go hand in hand with digital branding strategies. You can use specific marketing tactics like social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, search engine marketing, and so on to help you in growing your brand awareness.

As digital branding helps in retaining your customers, digital marketing will help in pushing them to conversion. Using effective marketing strategies will drive your sales up and maximize your profits. Being product-oriented, digital marketing helps in converting potential leads into paying customers.

For example, it is known that 93% of the purchases start at the search engine. Therefore, if you want your sales to go up, then you need to be at the top of the search engine results page. Search engine optimization, which is a vital digital marketing technique, helps in achieving this; an optimized website takes you to the top and right in front of your customers.

Fundamentally, most marketing techniques (such as search engine optimization, content marketing, or advertising) are intended to generate results—and, more often than not, the results that those strategies are attempting to generate have something to do with sales.

This is fantastic! If you want your company to succeed, you will, without a doubt, need to increase its sales.

However, branding is approached in a different way, and over a longer period of time. If you want to increase revenue, branding isn’t the greatest strategy to implement. The greatest option, however, is to focus on establishing brand recognition, driving positive brand sentiment, and cultivating customer loyalty. These are equally (if not more) essential goals, and they will have a significant impact on your capacity to drive sales in the long run.

So, when it comes to sales, think of marketing as a sprint—while branding? Think of branding as a marathon. That’s more similar to running a marathon.

Final note

Still, if you are wondering how to choose the right strategy? Then, analyze and look into your business goal and the position where your business stands. The strategy you choose is only up to you and your business’s primary business objective.

For instance, if you have started up a new business, then you need branding methods to establish your place in the market. The primary thing you should focus on is building your clientele that is establishing powerful customer relations.

But if you already have a business that is well established but you are struggling with driving traffic to your website or increasing sales, then you require digital marketing strategies. It includes methods like search engine optimization and paid advertising that will drive your customers to make a purchase.


Digital marketing vs. digital branding has only one conclusion. They are both important. Digital marketing and digital branding both have their own value and bring prosperity to your business. It is impossible to market a product if there is no brand. Similarly, it is absurd to just build a brand and leave it at that. You need to market the products and grow sales.