Business vs Brand vs Marketing strategy. A shortcut to understanding.

As marketers, we know a lot about analytics, planning, and how to get our work done quickly and efficiently. So what is a Business strategy and how do we manage it? Since I’m a visionary, I like to depict my thoughts.

My metaphorical vision of Branding and Marketing

Imagine a vessel full of apples. Fruit is your Branding, a product that your audience consumes. Marketing is your vessel in which you deliver the goods. Branding speaks about long-term positioning, target audience and prospects. Why do we grow apples? Are we going to sell them to people or will they be goat food apples? Red or green? We cannot change the variety of apples quickly, this is a long-term solution.

At the same time, Marketing, our vessel, is easy to change. You can sell apples in a wicker basket or cardboard box at a supermarket or farmer’s market. They are still apples, but you can deliver them in a variety of ways.

So what is our Business strategy in this case? This is the most comprehensive document that includes all the information you need to make your apples successful. Then we can say that this is A-Book-About-Growing-Apples. If you want to take a large share of the market and develop a sustainable apple business, you should start with a Business strategy first.

my modest notes from this lecture preparation

Business strategy

Or at the same time he names the organizational strategy. This is the most complete and extensive document that every organization should have. That includes:

• Core: vision and mission of the firm, long term objectives
• the resources we need to make all this possible; entry and exit barriers
• Marketing: market structure, competitors, segmentation, trends, branding and differentiation
• Organizational scale, agility, culture
• portfolio of products/services, technology, keys to success
• Finance: sources of revenue, supply and demand, cost structure, cash flow, strategic partnership
• IP, business model, distribution channels, spread and structure

Your business strategy is a roadmap that details your business goals and the actions you will — and won’t — take to achieve those goals. Business strategy describes how an organization works in every little detail. Since I’m not a business strategist or founder, let’s move on to our brand strategy.

There are six key components of a business strategy

Brand strategy

It exists to enable and bring to life the Business strategy. Brand strategy determines why you exist in the world. Branding communicates the things an organization stands for — values, attributes and characteristics. We can split it into parts:

• Brand positioning (your unique, relevant and sustainable position in the market)
• Brand story, its values, personality and tone of voice
• Employee value proposition (EVP) and employer branding in general
• Brand architecture (if there are a multiple brands)
• Customer value proposition (CVP) also for multi-brand organizations.

Once you’ve decided on your brand strategy, you should be on your way to building brand equity.

Marketing strategy

When an organization has its Brand strategy, you need to create a Marketing strategy and Marketing plan. Once again, Marketing strategy is shaped by Business and Brand strategies and not the other way around. Your marketing strategy is a function of your brand strategy.

If we are digging into Marketing it’s important to say that

“ Branding is strategic,

Marketing is more tactical”

Remember that you can change your apple vessels depending on the season, demand and market trends. In this section of planning, we are talking about putting the right product/service in the right place at the right time. To shape the Marketing strategy you must answer the following questions

• who are your customers?
• who are your competitors?
• what makes you (your product) unique?
• what are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? (SWOT analysis)
• what initiatives can be used to promote your product?

Marketing strategy is constantly changing. You can update your marketing strategy in response to campaign performance, customer needs, external trends and events, budgets, and even competitor tactics.

Questions for building a marketing strategy

All three strategies are based on a deep understanding of the client and a clear vision of the purpose of the organization. Embed customer research and customer information into each one to ensure your marketing activities are relevant to what customers really want.

Finally, I would like to add that I have never had such experience of correct and accurate strategy development in any company. It is always done together and in the same period of time. Founders start with a very rough idea and then make something beautiful. So feel free to get started!