Blog Post | Sep 17, 2024
The Perfect Pair: How to Blend Brand and Performance Marketing
Lately, many marketers have been talking about performance marketing and wondering about dedicating more of their marketing budgets to tactics like pay-per-click, search engine marketing, and display ads. This article examines how performance and brand marketing can work together to help achieve long-term results.
While you may have only recently heard about performance marketing, the concept has been around for a while. Performance marketing is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on outcomes and results: essentially, you're partnering with a company or platform that's your middleman between you and your customers, and you pay based on actions taken like clicks, subscriptions, leads, all the way through to actual sales. That's why it's called performance marketing: its point is to drive measurable results.
This kind of "pay to play" marketing has steadily gained popularity. In one recent survey, 70% of marketers said that they intended to allocate more of their dollars toward performance marketing and spend less on brand marketing—or marketing that focuses more on a brand's value and attributes to build a long-term relationship with customers.
While it's hard to fault marketers for wanting tactics that deliver instant gratification, performance marketing alone may not be sufficient to help them reach their long-term goals. This article will touch on:
What is Performance Marketing?
Performance marketing may sound similar to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and some performance marketing campaigns do include PPC, but it's an approach that includes a wide array of other digital tactics on platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google (search engine marketing), as well as display or digital banners ads.
Performance marketing is an excellent option for businesses looking to stretch their ad spend since you only pay when a designated action is completed. With a good performance marketing campaign, you'll see results almost immediately. Because performance marketing is so data-driven, marketers are empowered to optimize campaigns on the fly and, in the long term, better understand their customers and their online behaviors.
However, performance marketing alone is no substitute for brand marketing, which can help you distinguish your offerings, create connection with your customers, and drive repeat business.
Brand Marketing Basics
In contrast, brand marketing is all the activities that promote your products and company, strengthen your relationship with customers, and elevate your brand's value. It is a comprehensive long-term strategy that can include one or all of the elements, such as brand campaigns, outdoor signage, marketing collateral and brochures, content marketing, direct mail campaigns, logos and unique graphic elements, websites and many others.
Unless your products are sold entirely online via a retailer like Amazon, you need brand marketing to achieve your long-term goals. Even with PPC ads, you must have a highly functional, attractive website populated with informative pictures and content to drive customers to. And to better facilitate repeat business, you need to be able to reach out with communications that don't just push for instant sales but share your brand messaging or story to help establish a deeper relationship with your customers.
Determining the Right Mix
When considering how much funding or effort to put into either brand or performance marketing, there are many factors to consider, including if you want to position your products as high-end or premium, their repurchase cycle, and customer behavior. Experts recommend starting at around 70/30, allocating most of your spending to the strategy and tactics right for your business. Also consider:
>If you run a very online e-commerce business with a short sales cycle and rely on a constant stream of new leads, a good split would be 80% on performance marketing and 20% on brand-building.
Conversely, for businesses that offer luxury products or high-touch services or have built their reputation on being people-focused, spending much more on brand marketing is appropriate: the bare minimum would start at 50%. Performance marketing can help broaden your audience, but ultimately, brand marketing will help you deepen relationships, which, in turn, can build preference, drive higher-value sales, and earn customer loyalty.
Looking for Options to Get the Most Out of Your Marketing Budget?
If you’re considering pivoting to more performance marketing based on your budget, contact us! As direct marketing experts with years of experience, we can recommend cost-effective print solutions and advise on all phases of your campaign and strategy.
This kind of "pay to play" marketing has steadily gained popularity. In one recent survey, 70% of marketers said that they intended to allocate more of their dollars toward performance marketing and spend less on brand marketing—or marketing that focuses more on a brand's value and attributes to build a long-term relationship with customers.
While it's hard to fault marketers for wanting tactics that deliver instant gratification, performance marketing alone may not be sufficient to help them reach their long-term goals. This article will touch on:
- A brief introduction to performance marketing
- The role of brand marketing
- Figuring out the right mix for a balanced strategy
What is Performance Marketing?
Performance marketing may sound similar to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and some performance marketing campaigns do include PPC, but it's an approach that includes a wide array of other digital tactics on platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google (search engine marketing), as well as display or digital banners ads.
Performance marketing is an excellent option for businesses looking to stretch their ad spend since you only pay when a designated action is completed. With a good performance marketing campaign, you'll see results almost immediately. Because performance marketing is so data-driven, marketers are empowered to optimize campaigns on the fly and, in the long term, better understand their customers and their online behaviors.
However, performance marketing alone is no substitute for brand marketing, which can help you distinguish your offerings, create connection with your customers, and drive repeat business.
Brand Marketing Basics
In contrast, brand marketing is all the activities that promote your products and company, strengthen your relationship with customers, and elevate your brand's value. It is a comprehensive long-term strategy that can include one or all of the elements, such as brand campaigns, outdoor signage, marketing collateral and brochures, content marketing, direct mail campaigns, logos and unique graphic elements, websites and many others.
Unless your products are sold entirely online via a retailer like Amazon, you need brand marketing to achieve your long-term goals. Even with PPC ads, you must have a highly functional, attractive website populated with informative pictures and content to drive customers to. And to better facilitate repeat business, you need to be able to reach out with communications that don't just push for instant sales but share your brand messaging or story to help establish a deeper relationship with your customers.
Determining the Right Mix
When considering how much funding or effort to put into either brand or performance marketing, there are many factors to consider, including if you want to position your products as high-end or premium, their repurchase cycle, and customer behavior. Experts recommend starting at around 70/30, allocating most of your spending to the strategy and tactics right for your business. Also consider:
>If you run a very online e-commerce business with a short sales cycle and rely on a constant stream of new leads, a good split would be 80% on performance marketing and 20% on brand-building.
Conversely, for businesses that offer luxury products or high-touch services or have built their reputation on being people-focused, spending much more on brand marketing is appropriate: the bare minimum would start at 50%. Performance marketing can help broaden your audience, but ultimately, brand marketing will help you deepen relationships, which, in turn, can build preference, drive higher-value sales, and earn customer loyalty.
Looking for Options to Get the Most Out of Your Marketing Budget?
If you’re considering pivoting to more performance marketing based on your budget, contact us! As direct marketing experts with years of experience, we can recommend cost-effective print solutions and advise on all phases of your campaign and strategy.