Does brand mean your company name, your product, logo or a punch line?

No! Branding is how people perceive you, what they think about you when they hear your company name, see your logo or read your tag line.

Branding is something that evokes strong (pleasant) emotions, reinforces an experience and expectation of quality and a sense of accountability.

And why we do content marketing?

Most probably, to change the way people perceive you; to improve your image in their eyes and establish a personal connection with them.

Branding is a promise to give best experience whereas content marketing is a way to reinforce this promise.

Are branding and content marketing synonymous to each other or are they complementary to each other?

A difficult question to answer! However, let’s find out.

Branding and Content Marketing – Synonymous to Each Other

Your company name, logo and tag line call an experience your customers’ minds. Now their experience can be bad, pleasant or extremely pleasant depending upon the incidents that have happened in past with them.

Brands can be differentiated on the basis of falling short of expectations, meeting the expectations or exceeding the expectations. But the ultimate aim of branding is to exceeding customers’ expectations or transforming their negative perception into a positive experience.

On the other hand, content marketing aims to connect with your audience after analyzing their personas. It is dedicated to make customers enter into a conversation and share their experiences.

Now if their experiences/discussions are negative, you need to have a different strategy to change their opinions about you. Here the fight is to pacify the customers and transform their negative observation into an affirmative and optimistic occurrence.

If it is positive, you have a content marketing strategy to try and exceed their expectations so that they become your customers.

The underlying concept is same; the goal is one – to stand for quality and exceed customers’ expectation. This means, branding and content marketing are synonymous to each other.

Branding and Content Marketing – Complementary to Each Other

Branding is a proper application of marketing techniques to certain associations in memory of customers.

It refers to attaining a position where customers’ are able to recall and recognize a brand under different conditions. It’s about expressing familiarity with a brand as soon as its name is heard or logo is seen.

Branding is all about establishing connection with customers.

However, on the other hand, content marketing can be considered as a wider term.

Although it’s also about establishing connection with customers but it goes one step further. How?

Content marketing is done after personas of customers are studied. They are divided into different groups and are approached in different manners. It is done to further strengthen the relationship with customers.

Branding may or may not divide the customers into different categories but content marketing certainly categorizes them on the basis of their likes, choices and buying behavior.

Branding aims to establish trust whereas content marketing aims to be an integral part of customers’ daily living.

I’m not sure whether branding and content marketing are synonymous or complementary to each other. What all I can say is that they go hand in hand.

I leave this on you to decide. If you’re able to answer this question, please take time to share.