Digital Marketing vs Brand Management: Which is Better?

Marketing is a very broad concept. Even when businesses use great digital marketing services, delineating some strategies, such as digital marketing and brand management, can be difficult. That can make it challenging to know what your business needs to grow at any given moment.

This guide shows you how to choose the best marketing approach for your business, including:

• The differences between digital marketing and brand management
• Comparing the pros and cons of using these strategies

There is a lot to discuss, so get ready to take notes.

Let’s go!

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How To Choose the Best Marketing Approach for Your Business

Digital marketing services have myriad forms, including digital marketing and brand management, and if that were not enough, each one employs an extensive list of strategies to produce results. This adds more options, further complicating choosing the best strategies.

In addition, hybrid approaches, such as digital brand marketing, which combines digital and brand marketing, allow you to achieve more at the cost of making more elaborate plans. As a general rule, you should choose whichever best fits your current business needs.

However, start by understanding the merits of two similar but distinct forms of marketing: digital marketing and brand management. To determine which of these is better, the first step is to learn about them in context and in more detail.

     1. Promote Your Business Through Digital Marketing

Digital marketing means using various online channels, such as websites, videos, or paid ads, to push content to your target market. Since it has simple and basic usage, it melds well with a variety of marketing goals, including increasing website traffic and user engagement.

Unlike brand management, which focuses on promoting and preserving your brand’s image, digital marketing has many uses. For instance, its flexibility allows it to adapt to forceful changes in the marketing environment, such as the loss of reliable sources for user data.

Changes to search algorithms and data privacy laws point to diversifying your digital marketing channels as the best solution in the near future. Here is a concrete example of how that would work in practice, using social media, search engine optimization (SEO), and email as examples:

• Social media platforms are an excellent choice for brands that want to use their online reach to interact with their customers. In the context of digital marketing strategies, it goes beyond posting photos. It includes creating content that encourages users to respond.
• SEO has many possible applications, including optimizing your website to deliver the best customer experience (CX). It involves content creation through researching keywords and search intent, among other tasks. 
• Email marketing might not be as flashy as social media, but it has undeniable utility in marketing. As another mainstay in communication, email can wedge into just about any marketing strategy that you have in mind without an added cost.

     2. Maintain Your Reputation with Brand Management

Branding and reputation go hand in hand, which is why brand management is an important part of successful marketing. Branding is the identity or image that you create for your business. Think of it as what you portray your business to be, or how it comes across to your audience. 

On the other hand, reputation is how people feel about your brand, as seen through their posts and reviews and the general discourse surrounding your business on social platforms and in real life. This is where brand management becomes relevant. It prepares you to face this specific issue.

This does not mean that a brand manager’s job is to delete or ignore unfavorable comments that people may post. What they do is turn people into loyal customers through excellent branding. Below are three examples of this and how it can benefit your business’s bottom line:

• Keeping branding consistent lies at the core of brand management. That is because inconsistent branding makes your business seem unreliable and unrelatable. Keeping your messages, actions, and values aligned makes your business feel familiar to customers and keeps them coming back.
• Monitoring social channels is important to see what people say about your brand. Responding to comments and reviews, especially those voicing problems, helps you manage your reputation and make it more positive.
• Partnering with an influencer who shares your brand's values helps you reach a larger audience and increase brand awareness. This works even better when your partner is a loyal customer because they bring a more sincere and authentic perspective.

Comparing Digital Marketing and Brand Management

Now that you know the key differences between digital marketing and brand management, you should have an idea of which is better for your current business and marketing goals. To illustrate, take a look at the side-by-side comparison below of the pros and cons of both strategies:

While this is not a complete or comprehensive look at the true strengths and weaknesses of each strategy, it should offer enough for you to think more about what is important for your business. If you need information, contact a digital marketing consultant for expert advice.

Summing Up

Choosing the right marketing strategy is a difficult decision to make. Digital marketing and brand management are completely separate approaches that have their place in a business’s marketing strategy depending on what is best for its goals.

Need help in choosing the right marketing strategy for growing your business? Contact Digital Authority Partners (DAP) to learn how we can help.