GROWTH VS BRAND MARKETING: PART TWO THE POWER AND THE LIMITS OF BRAND

PICKING UP FROM PART ONE

In the last issue, I set out the differences between growth marketing and brand marketing. Growth, we said, is a discipline that works across short, medium and long horizons. It’s measurable, it scales, and it can show you exactly which lever is moving the needle. Brand, by contrast, is slower, costlier, and harder to measure. Yet it’s the thing that builds loyalty, pricing power and prestige.

This month we’re focusing squarely on brand marketing, what it does for you, what it won’t do, and why it matters in the gun trade.

WHAT BRAND REALLY MEANS

Brand marketing isn’t just about logos or glossy photographs, though those things matter. It’s about how people see you, remember you, and talk about you when you’re not in the room. It’s your reputation made visible. Done properly, brand creates an emotional connection. Customers don’t buy from you because you’re closest or cheapest, they buy from you because your name carries weight. That’s what allows houses like Purdey, Holland & Holland, and Rigby to command the prices they do. Their brand is not a typeface or a logo; it’s a story that has been reinforced for generations.

But let’s be clear about the limits of brand marketing. It won’t guarantee you a flood of sales tomorrow. It won’t provide the neat dashboard of figures you get from growth marketing. It won’t tell you in black and white whether the sponsorship you paid for has turned into an order. If you go into brand marketing expecting it to behave like growth, you will be disappointed.

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF BRAND

So what does brand marketing actually consist of? At its heart, it’s storytelling. A film of your engravers at work, a brochure that ties your gunsmithing to generations past, or a website that communicates your values as much as your products. It’s identity and consistency, the same tone, professionalism and style across your catalogues, showroom, social media and email. It’s association, sponsoring a clay competition, attaching your name to a countryside event, or backing a conservation project. And it’s customer experience, the way the phone is answered, the way a repaired gun is packaged and returned, the way a lesson is followed up with a personal note.

These are the touchpoints that collectively make up your brand. They are the reason customers talk about you differently from how they talk about your competitors. They’re the details that mean someone is proud to say “I shoot a Gallyon” or “I’ve always bought my cartridges from X.”

THE COST AND THE PAYBACK

None of this comes cheap. Brand marketing costs more and proves less. A glossy film can cost thousands. Sponsorship packages for a major clay shoot can easily run into five figures. High-end photography and design work are expensive. And when you’ve spent the money, you may not be able to point to a single sale that it generated. That’s why brand feels risky. Growth marketing gives you conversion rates, click-throughs and a clear return. Brand doesn’t.

And yet, it’s precisely that intangible quality that creates long-term value. A strong brand buys you three things: pricing power, loyalty, and referrals. Pricing power is obvious, when your brand carries prestige, you don’t have to compete on discounting. Loyalty is harder to put a price on but vital; it’s the clay ground that becomes a shooter’s “home ground” or the rifle maker that serves three generations of the same family. Referrals are brand in action too, word of mouth doesn’t just happen because of service, it happens because the name itself carries weight, and people are proud to recommend it.

But here’s the nuance: brand marketing should be the face of growth marketing, not its replacement. It gives growth something to stand behind, but if you let brand spend drift away from business need and data, it can quickly become ego-driven. Glossy films and expensive brochures feel good, but without a growth engine behind them they’re little more than vanity projects.

TWO BUSINESS MODELS, TWO OUTCOMES

Think about two businesses. One leans almost entirely on growth marketing. They run ads, optimise their website, and track every lead. They know their numbers, but outside their patch they’re invisible. The other leans heavily on brand. They produce films, publish glossy brochures, and put their name on events. They’re recognised everywhere, but they can’t always tie the spend to the order book.

The businesses that endure combine both. Growth to keep the sales pipeline flowing. Brand to build reputation, loyalty and resilience. Without brand, you’re a commodity. Without growth, you’re forgotten.

It’s also worth saying what brand will never do for you. It won’t replace the mechanics of selling. You still need the growth side of the equation to capture enquiries, follow up with prospects, and convert them into paying customers. Brand won’t make up for a poor website, a broken email funnel or an out-of-date SEO strategy. What it will do is make those growth activities easier. A trusted brand gets a higher click-through rate. A respected name sees more email opens. A heritage story gives your sales team a stronger hand. Brand won’t drive the car, but it will get you waved through the barriers.

A NECESSARY INVESTMENT

For many in the shooting world, brand feels like a luxury. It’s tempting to stick with the measurable side of growth because you can see the numbers. But if you never invest in brand, you’ll never build the kind of business that can command higher prices, weather market downturns, and be remembered for more than the last offer you ran.

In Part One we talked about growth as the measurable, disciplined engine that runs across short, medium and long horizons. In this Part Two we’ve explored brand, slower, costlier and harder to measure, but the outward face of growth that buys you pricing power, loyalty and prestige. In Part Three, we’ll return to growth and examine the practical strategies you can put in place at.