Marketing Speak: Branding, Messaging, and Positioning

One area I find people always get confused is the mixing of branding, positioning, and messaging. What is the difference anyway? In my experience many marketing and sales people confuse these terms and under estimate the effort of successfully executing these.

I searched “branding versus positioning” and the top result was over three years old with a mix useful and more market speak (less useful) answers. The next relevant link was simply incorrect.Positioning – Taken from the great book Positioning: The Battle for your Mind: “Positioning is what you do to the prospect’s mind”

Messaging: Is the exercise of creating messages that convey the positioning. These must be done within the context of the delivery tools which could include web site pages, live customer presentations, etc.

Branding: Branding is the result of the overall customer experience inluding sales and customer support. When done successfully reflects the positioning. Within marketing branding involves telling as many target customers as possible about the positioning through effective messaging.

First create the positioning, communicate to prospects and customers using messaging, and build the brand through the customer experience.

I look forward to comments and additional insights. Look forward to subsequent posts drilling down on each of branding, positioning, and messaging.