• 4 min read

🔥 Does brand even care about performance?

Brand marketing vs. performance marketing. Which is better? Do you have to choose one? What is even the hecken difference?

Dog meme: much wow doin me a heckin concern

The terms "brand marketing" and "performance marketing" are often bandied about, sometimes interchangeably. The actually refer to fundamentally different approaches and goals within the marketing spectrum (and should be friends!). If you understand these differences and how they work together, you'll be the resident pro at balancing long-term brand value with short-term gains, and be able to dodge all those "what's the ROI of our brand efforts" questions.

What is Brand Marketing?

Brand marketing focuses on building and nurturing the identity and perceived value of a brand over time. It's where we create emotional connections with customers, establishing loyalty and recognition that last beyond one off campaigns. Brand marketing teaches audiences who we are and what we stand for to help create lifetime value and trust.

A few things brand marketing can do for us:

  • Awareness: Make sure people know your brand exists and what it stands for
  • Perception & Sentiment: Influence how people think and feel about you
  • Loyalty: Develop lasting relationships with customers that translate into repeated business and advocacy

Tactic Toolbox: Influencer marketing, broad-reaching channels like TV and print, content marketing, social, community management, event marketing, public relations

What is Performance Marketing?

Performance marketing is highly data-driven and focuses on achieving revenue-generating outcomes such as conversions, clicks, or qualified leads. It’s focused on driving immediate results that can be directly attributed to specific campaigns or user behaviors. Performance marketing is tactical and often transactional: it likes rapid optimizations and quantitative data.

A few things performance marketing can do for us:

  • Conversions: Encourage specific customer actions like purchase, sign up, or download
  • Attribution: Every aspect of performance marketing campaigns is tracked and measured for effectiveness
  • Behavioral Data: Since we get to directly see what messages and tactics work to drive behavior, we can understand it better

Tactic Toolbox: Retargeting ads, pay per click (PPC), affiliate marketing, email campaigns, programmatic, predictive analytics

The intersection of brand and performance

While brand marketing and performance marketing might seem at odds, they are best friends. Brand marketing sets the stage by building a strong, positive perception of a brand. This sets performance marketing up for success, capitalizing on the brand's reputation to drive immediate actions. If your brand comms is a fire, think of brand marketing as the wood, and performance marketing as the fuel.

Some ways to integrate the two

Use data from performance marketing to inform brand strategies.
Insights from performance campaigns can reveal a lot about customer preferences and behaviors, which can be used to refine brand messaging.

Brand strength in performance campaigns
Strong brand equity can superpower your performance marketing campaigns by building trust and demand among potential customers.

Balance long-term and short-term goals
Align campaign messaging and targets so that performance marketing efforts contribute to long-term brand goals, like customer loyalty and brand advocacy.

Because I love analogies, rand marketing builds the boat and performance marketing makes it sail fast and efficiently. For a business to thrive, it needs the deep roots of brand marketing combined with the agility and precision of performance marketing. If your brand gets both right, you'll have more control over the future of your brand and predict the market so you stay on top.

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