What is the difference between brand, branding and brand identity?

If you are the owner of a developing business or you intend to present a product to the market in a professional way, you have probably heard these words a lot.
What is the difference between Brand and Branding and Brand identity?
What is a Brand? There are different descriptions in the definition of brand, but we want to point out here the definition provided by Marty Neumeier. He is the author of the famous book The Brand Gap. Reading this book can provide you with valuable information in the field of branding.
Marty Neumeier says in the definition of the brand: “Brand is the inner feeling of people about your product, service or company.” So, the logo of a company is not the brand of that company!
What many consider to be the same as the concept of brand. Brand is clearly something more tangible and beyond feeling. Elsewhere, Neumeier says in completing the brand definition: “Brand is not what you say, but what your customers say.” So, you cannot define your brand for others and tell what its characteristics are, but it is your customers who define your brand in the various interactions and communications they will have with your product and service in different places, or even they may already be familiar with your brand. Pay attention to the definition that others have made for them to have an image of your brand in mind. It is true that we cannot ask our customers how they think about us, but what we can do is to influence their view of our brand. This is the place where the second word, branding and its related concepts are formed.
What is Branding? Through branding, we try to create positive and good experiences for our customers and thus be effective in the formation of that ideal inner feeling in the minds of customers. Branding is what makes us special and different. When a customer wants to compare us to our competitors, it’s the branding that needs to be done well. To achieve this brand goal, it will require the use of different elements, and this is what we know as brand identity. Visual brand identity will help us as a tool to do good and effective branding.
What is Brand identity? Now it’s time to take a closer look at the last concept, brand identity. As we said, the brand is the inner feeling of people towards us, but the brand identity is exactly what they see and touch, and it has a completely visual nature.
Logo, corporate color, business cards, brochures, tone of voice, advertisements and many other elements actually display the brand identity or the visual identity of your brand. In short, in every point of contact or touch point that your customers will have with your brand, the foot of the brand identity will be mentioned. Experience shows that when customers see integration and coherence in the components of a brand’s visual identity, the first enjoyable experience of encountering the brand is formed in their minds.
What you need to do is create a constant flow of these positive customer experiences that will keep them coming back to you again and again and even encouraging others to volunteer to work with you.
When it comes time to buy a product or service, the first thing most of us do is ask our friends and relatives. Whether they know a brand for the products and services we are looking for and whether they have had a successful shopping experience in this field from that brand or not. So the matter is very clear.
The more loyal customers you create, the more followers your brand will have and the faster it will grow.
These customers will be a very important weight for your business and will play the role of your representative. You must know that this has been the most effective advertising method of all time. A simple recommendation from a friend or colleague can easily put your product or service in a competitive position.
In the end, if we want to briefly review everything we talked about, we can say: Brand is how your customers feel about your product or service. Branding includes all the efforts you make to positively influence the feelings of customers.
Brand identity is your external appearance in front of customers.