Brand vs Performance Marketing: Find the Strategy that Fits your Business Best
In the world of marketing, understanding the difference between brand marketing and performance marketing is key. Both strategies share a lot of similar underlying traits, but the overall goals of each are quite different. Brand marketing shares a company’s personality and aims for long term emotional connections with an audience, while performance marketing is all about measurable results and achieving immediate goals such as sales, conversions, or leads.
Let’s explore these two approaches and how they shape a company’s success.
What is brand marketing?
Brand marketing focuses on promoting the entire brand rather than just its specific products or services. While the products or services support the brand's promise, brand marketing aims to build the brand's value, which in turn increases the company's overall value.
Best platforms for brand marketing
Some of the best platforms for marketing your brand include; TV, Billboards, Radio, Events, Sports Team or Talent Sponsorships (the Original influencer marketing). Brands are now using all kinds of digital platforms to build their brand including; video, display, social, email, and even search as it gives companies the ability to use effective strategies across multiple channels as part of a broader marketing approach that reaches a far wider audience at different stages of the buying cycle. In order to figure out what message to share, it’s important to take a look at the brand attributes and make sure the content aligns to the platform.
What are brand attributes?
Attributes are what customers recognise about a brand; it's the feelings, messages, and visuals they connect with. It could be as easy as a punchy slogan they can’t forget, a catchy song that reminds them of a product, or specific colours of a logo that stand out. Attributes should be genuine, consistent, and true to the brand, ensuring that people can repeatedly return and rely on finding the same message they got the first time. Having impactful attributes that can easily be identified will make one’s brand marketing stand out against competitors and memorable to customers.
What is brand equity?
With clarity about your brand attributes, it’s easier to measure a consumer’s perception of the brand, which is known as brand equity. Brand equity focuses on how connected and loyal a customer is to a brand. Are they preferring it over your competitors? Are they repeat customers always coming back for more?
As a business owner, you can measure brand awareness through surveys, focus groups, and web traffic insights. Brand loyalty can be determined by monitoring purchasing behaviours such as repeat purchases and the time between purchases. Brand preference can be measured using purchase intent metrics. Strong brand loyalty provides more opportunities for innovation because it has the backing of a loyal, emotionally-invested customer base.
Key things to remember in brand marketing
As you go about brand marketing it’s important to figure out how to differentiate yourself from your competitors in the marketplace because it’s more saturated than ever before. But, if you find a unique story, spark interest, or shift your buyers perception through your brand, you can give customers something to believe in, something to remember. Instead of focusing on the actual product, brand marketing aims to share the company's core values, demonstrate why customers can trust them, and evoke emotional connections.
What is performance marketing?
Performance marketing is a dynamic digital approach all about getting results through measurable outcomes.
Advertisers team up with agencies or publishers to create and place ads on various channels. Once live, advertisers pay based on the actions their ads generate, like clicks or sales. This data-driven approach uses channels such as embedded web content, social media, and search engines to reach desired target audiences. Understanding your target audience is essential, so you can generate maximum interest, boost conversions, and tailor your messaging to resonate with your audience effectively.
There are a few ways to pay when it comes to this type of marketing:
Cost Per Click - Pay based on the number of times the ad is clicked on
Cost Per Impression - Pay based off how many views the ad has
Cost Per Sale - Pay when a sale derives from the ad
Cost Per Lead - Pay when someone signs up or demonstrates interest
Cost Per Acquisition - Pay when a customer completes an action
Depending on what kind of goal your company has, it will affect which payment model is most suitable. Each option offers its own advantages and considerations, allowing advertisers to align their payment structure with their specific objectives and budget constraints.
Best platforms for performance marketing
To drive traffic, the most common performance marketing channels are:
Banner (Display) Ads - Ads that appear on the sides of the content being consumed, such as articles or videos that aim to capture attention and take users to the advertiser’s website.
Native Advertising - Sponsored ads that live next to organic content, offering a natural promotion of the brand.
Content Marketing - Industry-related content such as blogs or case studies that share valuable information and subtly link back to the product or service a company sells.
Social Media - Targeted ads on platforms like Facebook or Instagram, with campaigns designed to reach new audiences or re-engage previous site visitors who haven't yet converted.
Search Engine Marketing - Ads displayed on search engine results pages, like Google or Microsoft Bing, allowing businesses to capture users actively searching for relevant products or services.
Affiliate marketing vs performance marketing
Affiliate marketing, often categorised alongside performance marketing, operates differently in terms of management. While performance marketing channels, such as those above, require ongoing active management to optimise performance, affiliate marketing is comparatively passive. In affiliate marketing, businesses set parameters for qualifying leads and agree on payment terms, but the day-to-day management is typically less involved compared to other performance marketing channels.
Paid marketing vs performance marketing
One other aspect to keep in mind, is that performance marketing and paid marketing aren't the same - as they sometimes get confused to be. Performance marketing aims for specific results and Return On Investment (ROI) or Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), often paying for actions like clicks or sales. In contrast, paid marketing bids to be featured within slots on a specific platform or network.
Brand marketing vs performance marketing
Now while brand marketing and performance marketing often target consumers on the same platforms and share a common goal to grow brand awareness and drive purchases - these two types of marketing still have a lot of differences.
Brand marketing takes more of a visual, storytelling approach such as logos, photography and memorable taglines like mentioned before. A positive result for a brand marketing campaign would be a number of impressions or how many people are aware rather than any return on investment. Brand marketing can fall short as it can be costly and time-consuming. It can also struggle with how intense the competition is in the market.
In contrast, performance marketing doesn’t focus on telling a good story, instead it concentrates on how to get an actual click or sale of a new product or service. It's known for its cost-effectiveness, as advertisers only pay for specific actions, ensuring that every dollar spent contributes directly to tangible results. Performance marketing also provides clear metrics for evaluating success, enables advertisers to target specific audience segments with precision, and can be easily adjusted based on real-time ad performance data.
However, some drawbacks of performance marketing include its lack of emphasis on brand building. It's primarily driven by Call-To-Action (CTA), which may lead businesses focused on building brand equity to overlook performance marketing as it could dilute their primary message. Additionally, it may not always provide clear insights into the revenue generated by ads.
At the end of the day, these two types of marketing can complement each other well and make a huge impact if used correctly.
Inspiring consumers with a strong brand message and building loyalty is vital because customers make purchases based on trust. So, when they encounter multiple touchpoints and form a connection with a brand through brand marketing, seeing the same brand presented in a performance ad increases the likelihood of a purchase.
Which one is right for your business?
Take a close look into your business and determine what’s lacking and what needs improvement.
Does your target audience fully grasp your brand story and feel emotionally connected to it? If not, it might be time to consider implementing some brand marketing strategies. On the other hand, if your audience understands your brand well but seems unsure about where or when to make a purchase, performance marketing could be the solution you're looking for. Ultimately, it’s crucial you take the time to explore your options and determine which type of marketing aligns best with your business objectives.
It's time to take the necessary steps, so you can achieve success!
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