Blending Branding with Business Development

What is blending branding with business development? Most business owners mistakenly confuse business branding and marketing optimization with business development. It’s a common misunderstanding which creates miscommunication and an unrealistic expectation by business owners who assume that marketing professionals/company(s) are supposed to generate revenue for branding activities. Both categories are separate and distinct as is the case in particular for business development strategy.

Let’s define both terms and provide greater information on the function of each. What is marketing and what is does it consist of. According to dictionary.com, marketing is defined as the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling. Thus, marketing is an over-encompassing field consisting of many activities leading to the sale of the product or service. The over encompassing phrase I like to use is marketing optimization. This insists on improving the activities of marketing and creates a better blend between business branding and business development strategy.

Let’s look at how the process occurs. A business produces a product or develops a service to sell to consumers. Next, researchers determine the demographics, geography and the means to communicate information about the company’s products and services with their targeted consumer. At this point, business branding and business development or business development strategy breaks off and both embark on separate journey before converging at the end of the process. To clarify, business branding efforts are undertaken to education and to help accustom the consumer to the company. A consumer must connect the product or service with the business name. That is the purpose of business branding. For example, we associate the brand name Xerox to making a copy – “make a xerox”, and the brand name Kleenex with tissue paper. That’s outcome of a successfully executed and long term business branding. Most businesses hope to achieve this level of mental engineering and attachment to their products or services. Of course this doesn’t take place over night and with limited resources and the state of the availability of capital in today’s competitive market, businesses tend to heavily rely on a business development strategy. The objective of today’s business environment is to create immediate revenue rather than wait until the business branding yields results.

In continuing with the definition and marketing process, we would like to think that the business has already engaged in business branding and haven’t neglected this aspect of marketing. It should be an ongoing process and sufficient capital should be allocated annually for this process. If not, the process of business development and branding occur simultaneously, which may add more stress on those involved with the marketing process to produce. On the contrary, if branding has already been initiated and the consumer base within the market share is aware of the brand name, then a business development strategy can effectively be executed. There are different forms of business development strategies; however the premise remains the same which is an underlying call to action message. It’s important to utilize many mediums of marketing and to create a sense of urgency with an enticing message to prompt the consumer to proceed. Some examples of business development strategy includes outbound phone calls, outreach via sales teams, and in the case of digital marketing, execute pay-per-click activities as well as articles written with website search engine optimization formatting.

Ultimately, the main difference between business branding and business development is that business development strategy has a immediate request for action, while business branding is meant to help acquaint the consumer with the company, product and/or service.

If you are looking for a marketing company that can offer a comprehensive approach to marketing, please contact Marketing by Mikael. Marketing by Mikael is operated by individuals with 20 plus combined years of marketing experience and the proven marketing strategies will yield the results you seek. Contact us today at Tel. 818-540-1208 or email Info@MarketingbyMikael.com. We look forward to building your business by blending branding with business development.