The Push & Pull Between Brand and Performance Marketing

As with just about anything in life, marketing is all about finding the balance. On the one hand, you want quick wins to drive revenue in the here and now. On the other hand, you know that building trust and loyalty with your consumers takes time. 

Far too many brands run in one direction or the other. But sustainable growth lies in tapping into both short and long-term strategies. So let’s dig into the difference between performance marketing, which focuses on driving immediate results, and brand marketing, which focuses on elevating your brand’s standing in a way that lasts. And, more importantly, how you can blend the two. 

A quick refresher

Since we want to talk about these two marketing strategies, let’s first give a quick overview so we’re all on the same page. 

Performance marketing

This marketing tactic focuses on — you guessed it — performance. It seeks out results that you can measure, proving that your marketing dollar serves up ROI. This has gotten easier and easier as our lives get more digital.

Take pay-per-click (PPC) advertising as an example. With this type of performance marketing, you only shell out money if the ad actually performs (in this case, gets clicked). 

Not all performance marketing centers around strategies that you only pay for with specific results, though. Retargeting campaigns are a kind of performance marketing, as are analytics-based influencer marketing and sponsored content.

Long story short: performance marketing’s main focus is results. And it relies on data — from clicks to checkouts — to validate those results. 

Brand marketing

Brand marketing zooms out. It’s based on the idea that when a consumer believes in and/or likes your brand, they’re more likely to buy from you. It gives you a way to stand out from the competition and create loyalty that keeps customers coming back. 

In other words, brand marketing is a long game. Blogging, having a presence at specific events, or anything else you do to establish yourself as a leader in your field counts as brand marketing. These marketing efforts don’t need to turn directly into dollars today, or even tomorrow. It’s all about elevating your brand and building affinity with your customers.  

Feeling torn 

Ideally, you’d have an endless pool of resources to pull from and you could fully lean into both performance and brand marketing. But time, creativity, and money are all precious resources. Most companies — especially early-stage ones and those at critical junctures — feel like they have to choose. 

That can feel tricky. Even if you decide you want to split your marketing spend in half, choosing to invest in performance and brand marketing separately requires your team to develop expertise in these two distinct areas. 

Ultimately, a lot of companies feel torn. But there’s a way to take that push and pull you might be feeling and direct it into forward momentum for your company. 

Making the two work in tandem

Brand and performance marketing shouldn’t be two siloed strategies your company deploys. Instead, they can — and should — inform one another.

Your brand identity should underpin everything you do, including your performance marketing campaigns. That might mean, for example, that you skip campaigns for specific high-ranking keywords because they don’t align with your brand values. That’s okay. In fact, it might help your customer build more brand affinity because they see your brand as consistent and trustworthy. 

Similarly, your performance marketing can help to inform your brand positioning as you move forward. You might learn from a specific performance marketing campaign that certain messaging or placement really resonates with your consumers. Applying that helps you bolster your brand identity in a way that builds not just brand awareness, but brand loyalty. 

Building a holistic marketing strategy

Marketing evolves quickly, and it’s only speeding up. It’s tempting to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. But a scattershot approach isn’t sustainable, and it could cost you a pretty penny without driving lasting results. 

Instead, before you launch into any performance or brand marketing efforts, take a step back. Get clear on your brand identity. Make sure your team agrees on your target consumer and the pain points you solve for them. 

From there, you can start to develop specific performance marketing campaigns and brand-strengthening efforts. If you have separate teams working on each, make sure they’re communicating. Keeping things aligned across your brand helps you build consistent, brand-value-driven messaging that resonates with your consumer, whether they find you in a PPC ad or a thought leadership piece. 

Want help aligning all of your marketing efforts on the solid foundation of your brand identity? Need support in identifying the performance marketing opportunities that best align with your brand values? We’ve got you. Get in touch today.