Five Differences Between Branding and Direct Response Every Marketer Should Know

Identifying the right combination of branding and direct response marketing is essential to establish brand awareness, grow customer base and make sales. These two approaches play a significant role in a company's overall marketing strategy, but need to be understood as different approaches.

Brand marketing focuses on educating or entertaining its recipients with brief messages and visuals to tell its story. The goal is to become recognizable and memorable when its time for a customer to choose. Direct response strategists track and measure response rates and conversion rates to optimize performance.

The audience for brand marketing is scattered across various channels, while direct response is targeted to the audience most likely to take an action. Brand copy is focused on education or entertainment, while direct response copy is written to drive response and lead to an offer. Testing approaches for branding and direct response also differ - surveys and focus groups for branding and measurables for direct response.