Should you focus on building awareness and reputation or drive sales, leads, and traffic?
There's a lot of debate in the marketing world surrounding the topic of performance marketing vs brand marketing.
Both have their own merits, so it's important to understand the strengths of each and the key to balancing them to get the best results.
To help you make the best decision for your business, we’ll take a closer look at each approach and settle the performance marketing vs brand marketing debate once and for all.
All set to dig deep into performance marketing vs brand marketing?
Let’s start this performance marketing vs brand marketing discussion by defining what each of these marketing tactics means.
Brand marketing is all about creating and maintaining a strong, positive reputation for your brand. It's about ensuring that your customers and clients always have a good experience with your company and that they continue to recommend you to others.
You’ll discover in this performance marketing vs brand marketing guide that brand marketing is not about PR or promoting your products or services.
Brand marketing focuses on everything else that goes into creating a great customer experience, from the way you answer the phone to the quality of your product or service.
The goal is to create an emotional connection with the brand and build brand equity over time, ultimately driving brand loyalty and long-term growth.
We can look at Nike’s brand marketing strategy to understand how it is done.
The company is known for its campaigns that have helped it build a strong and consistent brand image globally.
The “Just Do It” brand marketing campaign, launched in 1988, included a video marketing strategy where athletes talked about the emotions they feel when they exercise.
The video featuring Walt Stack, an 80-year-old runner garnered a lot of views when it was launched in the late 1980s. The marathoner explains how he covers 17 miles each morning, evoking an emotional response from viewers.
Image via YouTube
With an omnichannel marketing strategy that includes traditional and non-traditional channels (experience-focused retailing, fitness trackers, sponsorships, etc), Nike has consistently strengthened its brand image and built a loyal fan base.
In this case, brand marketing takes the lead in the performance marketing vs brand marketing discussion. However, let’s not jump to any conclusions yet.
Here’s a look at Nike’s experience-focused retailing replete with a multi-touch screen, product detection through RFID, real-time product comparison, etc.
Image via Demodern
This brand marketing strategy has paid off as these stats show.
Image via Statista
95% of the US population is aware of the brand and 43% of people say they might use Nike again. This shows that 90% of Nike’s customers are loyal to the brand when you consider the 48% usage rate.
In 2023, Nike was ranked sixth in the top ten customer loyalty leaders list.
Image via Marketing Charts
Brands such as Nike, Netflix, and Apple market themselves regardless of any product launch. Note that they have spent years building a positive perception and strengthening brand equity through their brand marketing efforts.
Now, let’s get to performance marketing.
Unlike brand marketing, performance marketing is all about achieving specific objectives and driving short-term results. This could be sales, leads, web traffic, or anything else that can be measured and quantified. The goal of performance marketing campaigns is to focus on what's known as the “bottom line.”
This approach is results-driven, and businesses typically use metric-based KPIs to measure success.
In this strategy, brands place ads on digital marketing channels and pay the channel/publisher only when someone clicks on or views the ad.
A marketing agency worked with a plumbing business to boost conversions and brand visibility through social media marketing.
The performance marketing strategy included branded and community-centered organic posts to build a strong social media presence and boost engagement.
The marketing agency focused on informational and promotional Facebook posts that were created for lead generation in addition to driving conversions, and building stronger connections with social media users.
The agency also incorporated videos and images into the Facebook posts to spark interest and increase engagement. Including reviews from satisfied customers further built trust and drove conversions.
Consistent content across the brand’s social media profiles were also planned to increase organic impressions.
This campaign helped increase:
Image via Marketing 360
So, would you choose this approach in the performance marketing vs brand marketing debate since the results are quick and measurable? Before you make a decision, let’s look at the differences between brand and performance marketing campaigns.
Performance marketing vs brand marketing differ in terms of goals, metrics, and the channels they use.
The goals of performance marketing and brand marketing may seem similar at first glance, but they are actually quite different.
Performance marketing focuses on achieving specific, measurable goals such as sales or lead generation. Brand marketing, on the other hand, is more focused on building long-term brand awareness and creating a positive brand image for the company.
Let’s see how performance marketing vs brand marketing goals differ. These are the goals and metrics of brand marketing:
| Brand awareness | |
| Brand loyalty | |
| Preference | |
| Brand advocacy | |
| Brand engagement | |
| Brand identity | |
Here are some of the common objectives of performance marketing campaigns:
| Generate leads | |
| Boost traffic | |
| Engagement | |
| | |
| Remarket to customers | |
Performance marketing is all about achieving specific, measurable goals such as sales or leads. Marketers use performance marketing platforms to track these metrics and fine-tune their marketing efforts.
Brand marketing campaigns are more focused on building awareness and creating a positive image for the company, which can be hard to measure.
Another factor that will determine the outcome in the performance marketing vs brand marketing debate is the promotion approach.
There are many channels that can be used for both brand marketing and performance marketing, and the best approach will depend on the brand, the products/services, and the target audience.
For brand marketing, a combination of traditional and digital channels and tactics are typically used to build a strong brand image including:
Brands also use experiential marketing that’s all about creating and delivering rich experiences that engage customers and reinforce brand identity.
Image via Barbie Selfie Generator
As already mentioned in this performance marketing vs brand marketing guide, performance marketing typically focuses on short-term measurable outcomes and a defined timeframe.
For instance, Attrocks’ SEO campaigns were designed to boost search traffic in just 4 months:
Image via Attrock
This example highlights key metrics, such as user acquisition, engagement, duration, and bounce rate. Analyzing this data provides valuable insights to optimize campaigns and inform future strategies.
In addition, understanding user behavior enables you to refine targeting, content, and messaging. This, in turn, directly impacts conversion rates.
Another key difference to note in this performance marketing vs brand marketing discussion is how budgets are allocated and the flexibility in spending.
Since performance marketing metrics are measurable, marketers allocate funds to marketing channels or campaigns delivering the highest ROI. The flexibility here lies in the ability to adjust your marketing budget in real-time based on data analytics and performance metrics.
For instance, if your email marketing campaigns are outperforming your social media campaigns, you can quickly reallocate more resources to boost your email marketing.
On the flip side, brand marketing takes a long-term approach with campaign budgets spanning months or years without yielding immediate results.
Since it prioritizes long-term brand recognition and customer loyalty, expenditures are planned upfront for initiatives like television ads, sponsorships, or content marketing.
These large-scale brand initiatives require fixed commitments, leaving little room for quick adjustments. However, this steady investment builds a foundation of trust and brand equity over time, which can complement performance marketing efforts.
Now, let’s look at the common characteristics in this performance marketing vs brand marketing discussion.
For starters, both performance marketing and brand marketing involve creating some kind of advertising or promotional content strategy.
This could be a TV commercial, a radio spot, a print ad, or even social media content. The goal is to get potential customers to see or hear this content and then take some kind of action, such as visiting your website or making a purchase.
Performance marketing vs brand marketing both seek to engage the target audience effectively, whether by driving immediate conversions or encouraging long-term customer loyalty.
The ultimate goal of performance marketing vs brand marketing approaches is to drive sales.
The two marketing approaches can also use the same traditional or digital advertising platforms to achieve their goals. For instance, Connected TV platforms or social media can be used for brand marketing and performance marketing.
Also, both performance and brand marketing require a clear understanding of your target audience. You need to know who you're trying to reach and what kinds of messages will resonate with them.
Both approaches leverage customer feedback and insights to optimize campaigns, refine messaging, and align with consumer behavior and audience preferences.
Both performance marketing vs brand marketing strategies rely on valuable and relevant content that resonates with the audience in every step of their customer journey to achieve business objectives.
Performance marketing uses relevant offers and persuasive CTAs to drive action. On the other hand, brand marketing focuses on storytelling and consistent messaging throughout the customer journey to build long-term brand value.
Fortunately, you don’t have to choose when it comes to performance marketing vs brand marketing.
Combining brand marketing with performance marketing will help growth-oriented brands to stay ahead of the curve and achieve overall objectives.
What’s the ideal balance?
The proportion of performance marketing vs brand marketing will depend on your specific goals, target market, and your products/services.
Remember to not rely only on brand marketing, which can take a lot of time to show results.
Similarly, focusing only on performance marketing can give immediate results but can compromise long-term loyalty and brand image.
Q1. What is the difference between performance marketing vs brand marketing?
A. Performance marketing vs brand marketing is based on differences in goals, strategy, and measurable outcomes. Branding focuses on creating a recognizable and consistent image that customers recognize.
Performance marketing takes tactical approaches to driving sales such as promotions, discounts, and targeted campaigns.
Q2. How do brand marketing and performance marketing work together?
A. Brand marketing and performance marketing are two sides of the same coin that work together to build customer relationships, increase customer loyalty and acquisition, and ultimately drive revenue.
Q3. What is the difference between brand advertising and performance advertising?
A. Brand marketers take a long-term approach to brand building through messaging that evoke emotion.
Performance marketers design a short-term strategy to drive a specific action such as purchasing or signing up for a service.
Q4. What is the meaning of performance marketing?
A. Performance marketing is a form of digital marketing where advertisers place ads on social media, websites, or search engines and pay marketing companies /publishers when someone takes an action such as clicking, purchasing, or downloading.
Q5. What's the difference between growth marketing and performance marketing?
A. The main difference is their focus.
Growth marketing focuses on building long-term relationships with customers, engaging them, and driving loyalty. Performance marketing aims to drive immediate results by optimizing campaigns.
We've come to the end of our performance marketing vs brand marketing guide. Our verdict is that performance marketing and brand marketing are both powerful tools for businesses to reach their target audience.
Both performance and brand marketing can be highly effective in an integrated digital strategy as they complement each other in providing different types of results for businesses.
By carefully assessing each approach in this performance marketing vs brand marketing discussion, you can choose which method will help your business reach its objectives most efficiently.
Still not sure which approach is right for you? We can help simplify the performance marketing vs brand marketing dilemma for you.
From crafting a data-driven digital marketing strategy and landing page optimization to designing brand messages, we can help you make the best of both brand marketing and performance marketing.
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