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It can be tricky to differentiate between branding and marketing. They’re both critical business activities that serve distinct purposes—they’re also intertwined. Branding is the process of establishing a unique identity for your company, while marketing is the process of communicating that identity in order to sell your products or services. In order to successfully market your business, you first need a brand. You can also utilize brand marketing tactics to promote awareness and interest in your brand. This is a marketing effort that relies on both a well-defined brand identity and a smart marketing strategy.
Ahead, learn more about the relationship between branding and marketing. Plus, get inspired by real ecommerce examples that illustrate how your business can find success by using branding and marketing in conjunction with one another.
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What is branding?
Branding establishes a unique identity for your company, differentiating it from competitors. To strengthen your brand, focus on creating a consistent message across all platforms, including visuals and tone. Engaging storytelling and memorable customer experiences further reinforce brand loyalty and recognition.
Developing a brand can be done on a shoestring budget and short timeline, or it can take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete. Business owners who want to invest in building a resonant, enduring brand often hire branding agencies to lead the branding process. Branding experts consider market trends, your company’s core values, and your target audience’s preferences. Based on that research, they then create a set of unique brand attributes and develop comprehensive brand guidelines that govern usage in a branding package.
You’ll use these guidelines to ensure brand consistency across your company, from internal memos to the design of your ecommerce website to training employees to provide exceptional customer service.
Here are a few essential branding assets:
- Logos
- Typography
- Slogans
- Photography style
- Color palettes
- Brand voice
- Copy style and usage guide
What is marketing?
Marketing is how you get the word out about your brand, products, services, and anything else related to your business that you’re ready to promote. It’s an umbrella term that includes a wide variety of strategies and tactics that are in service of generating demand for your offerings and driving sales. This includes developing brand loyalty, as well as managing a set of communication channels. Those marketing channels could include your website, social media, email, blog, public relations, events, paid advertising, and even branded merchandise.
Some of the many types of marketing include:
- Content marketing. Brands use content marketing materials like blog posts and videos to build trust with their audience. Rather than directly selling consumers products, content marketing focuses on offering content that’s of value to your target audience. Over time, this strategy helps attract potential customers into your marketing funnel, build your brand reputation through high-quality useful content, and grow awareness of your brand through search engine optimization (SEO) tactics.
- Social media marketing. Social media marketing encompasses organic content, paid ads, and influencer partnerships on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. Organic tactics in social media marketing are often focused on building your brand’s following and cultivating authentic community within your audience.
- Email marketing. Email marketing strategies can have a range of goals, including increasing attendance at events, encouraging customer loyalty through special offers, educating on relevant topics, and more. You might send a weekly newsletter to your whole email list, automate a flow of emails to segments of your list, or a combination. Any email marketing campaign needs to have a clear call to action (CTA) that leads readers to click through to your chosen channel (e.g., your website, a specific product, or social post).
- Affiliate marketing. In this strategy, content creators or publishers, known as affiliates, earn a commission by promoting a product or service for a retailer or advertiser. Affiliates can share their unique product links via social media, blog posts, or email. It’s common for social media influencers to find success with affiliate marketing.
Key differences: branding vs. marketing
Take a look at these important distinctions between branding and marketing:
Brand messaging, plus selling points like discounts and product positioning
Aim of branding
- Establish a unique brand identity that resonates with customers
Aim of marketing
- Promote products and make sales
What branding conveys
What marketing conveys
- Brand messaging, plus selling points like discounts and product positioning
Branding lifecycle
- Long-term
Marketing lifecycle
- Can be long-term or short-term
Target audience
- Stays the same regardless of audience segment
Target audience
- Can vary depending on campaign and channel
Branding success metrics
- Includes brand awareness, brand perception, and brand loyalty
Marketing success metrics
- Can include KPIs like click-through rates, email open rates, and website traffic
3 examples of how branding and marketing work together
Great marketing campaigns showcase your company’s unique branding while conveying additional selling points like price and quality.
Take a look at how these ecommerce companies use branding and marketing together:
Fishwife
The unique visual branding of tinned fish company Fishwife is the product of a collaboration between Fishwife co-founder Becca Millstein and designer Daniel Miller. Across its website and packaging, the company features hand-drawn illustrations in vibrant colors, often centering on the brand’s namesake “Fishwife” character.
For Fishwife, a distinctive brand identity has captured customer attention—especially on social media—which drives its organic marketing flywheel and keeps costs low.
“If you have a truly innovative product and you have a really great brand and the product is really good—the brand is really strong and it looks attractive and appealing to people and translates over social media—the marketing will come very, very cheaply,” said Becca in an episode of Shopify Masters. “Because people will be so excited about your product that the network effect will spring into action.”
This network effect—when something gains value as more people use it—was on full display when Fishwife held a two-weekend-long pop-up in New York City. The temporary shop heavily featured the company’s branding, with the exterior and interior walls painted in Miller’s signature style. Lines formed around the block, and TikTok creators posted videos about their visits to the shop, making the pop-up a must-visit event.
Graza
Olive oil company Graza set out to create a brand that people can have affinity toward. It invested in brand work with an agency, which helped it develop messaging, copy, and visuals that resonated with its home cook audience.
“The brand feels friendly, thanks to the upfront work and how the brand is positioned,” says Graza founder Andrew Benin in an episode of Shopify Masters. “That, combined with a new form factor, tactile experience, something that can make you laugh, definitely set fire to it.”
While its signature green squeeze cap wasn’t the direct result of a branding exercise, it is a perfect expression of its fun and joyful brand personality—one that has paid dividends in its influencer marketing campaigns.
When Graza began seeding its products with cooking influencers on social media, it realized that the instantly recognizable green cap was showing up in their videos—even when they weren’t directly promoting Graza.
“These moments when you see a green cap there, a green cap there—we didn’t engineer it to be that way. We didn’t think that that would happen,” Andrew says. “But we’re reaping the benefits of it—because there’s so much behind that green cap and that bottle.”
Starface
Starface is a skin care brand known for its bright yellow star-shaped pimple patches. The company’s vibrant branding and product design has not only worked to destigmatize acne, but it’s accelerated the company’s marketing efforts. Social media users post photos and videos of themselves proudly wearing the company’s branded patches. Even when creators aren’t wearing the patches, Starface’s branded yellow patch case might be visible in the background of its videos.
This grassroots user-generated content (UGC) marketing strategy has allowed Starface to reach new audiences while building an online community. The company’s distinctive branding also has offline reach, since customers wearing the patches in real life effectively become brand ambassadors. Both online and offline, customers can see fellow customers wearing Starface patches and feel part of a community.
“If you see someone walking on a street with a star on their face, it’s instantly recognizable. You almost feel like you’re part of this tribe, part of this community,” says Starface president Kara Brothers in an episode of Shopify Masters. “That’s an asset for us.”
@skzzolno @STARFACE pimple patches have become an accessory at this point #pimplepatches #acne #breakout #starface ♬ original sound - sammy k
Branding vs Marketing FAQ
Which is more important—branding or marketing?
Neither branding nor marketing outweighs the other—strong businesses need both working together. Branding establishes the unique identity a company stands for, while marketing communicates that identity to drive sales. Because branding typically comes first, its guidelines, like color palette, tone, and voice, shape every marketing material that follows, from social posts to email campaigns.
What is the relationship between branding and marketing?
Branding and marketing work as a team: branding defines who a business is, and marketing spreads that message to build sales. A brand's personality, values, and visual identity give marketing campaigns a consistent foundation, so every ad, email, or social post reflects the same tone and story. Without a defined brand, marketing efforts risk feeling inconsistent across channels.
How do you measure branding vs. marketing success?
Branding success is tracked through perception metrics like brand awareness, brand perception, and brand loyalty, often measured with tools such as Net Promoter Score. Marketing success is tracked through performance metrics tied to specific campaigns, including click-through rates, email open rates, conversion rates, and website traffic. Because branding builds long-term sentiment while marketing drives short-term action, businesses typically review each on a different timeline.
Does branding or marketing cost more for a small business?
Branding costs vary widely—some businesses build a brand on a shoestring budget, while others invest years and hundreds of thousands of dollars working with an agency. Marketing costs tend to be more flexible and ongoing, since ad spend, content creation, and email campaigns can scale up or down based on available budget. Many businesses treat branding as a larger one-time investment and marketing as a recurring expense.
How often should you update your branding compared to your marketing?
Branding should stay consistent over the long term, since frequent changes can confuse customers and dilute brand recognition. Marketing, by contrast, is built to flex—campaigns, messaging, and channels can shift often to match trends, seasons, or new products. Businesses generally revisit brand guidelines only during a major rebrand, while marketing strategies get refreshed regularly to keep pace with performance data.
