No matter whether you’re in lead generation or ecommerce, it can feel like you have to pick a lane when it comes to building your brand persona and actually driving traffic and conversions. The reality is that you need a balance of both, and they’re reliant on each other if you want to build your business and increase growth. If you’re not sure how that works (or what it should look like), let’s break it down a bit.
The False Trade-Off Between Brand and Performance
When we’re looking at branding, we’re talking about the personality of your business. It’s the logo, your tone of voice, the kind of imagery you use, and how you interact with your customers. Yes, it’s there to drive awareness, but also to make it clear to people who find you what you stand for and whether you’re the right kind of business for them.
Performance is driven by more active means. It spans everything from SEO and copywriting to get Google to rank your site, to paid ad campaigns to capture (or recapture) the attention of people who are more likely to convert. Branding is the long-term game, while performance marketing is oriented to give more immediate results.
They aren’t competing with each other – they’re different sides of the same coin. People need to engage with your brand and feel a level of trust before they commit to buying or engaging your services. That’s where your branding comes in. As far as getting eyes on all that work you’ve done to differentiate yourself, that’s where performance marketing strategy shines.
Another way of looking at it is that performance marketing captures interest that already exists. Brand marketing creates the demand in the first place (which is especially key if you’re doing something new or a little different).
When you think about the buyer journey, it’s a rare event that someone wakes up one day, trips across your website, and immediately puts their card details into your website. They need to see who you are, know what you stand for, and be able to actually find you again when they’re ready to convert.
Ads and content are only as good as the brand you’ve created allows them to be. So you want to make sure that by the time a prospective customer or client is ready to take the leap, that familiarity is already doing the heavy lifting and that you’re the obvious choice.
Why Performance Marketing Plateaus Without Brand Investment
When it comes to business, everyone loves metrics and data. Whether you’re looking at organic traffic or ROAS, performance marketing is so favoured because of how measurable and scalable it is. The issue with looking at numbers and not much else is that you’re competing with everyone in the same way. Bidding strategies and keywords are essential, but when you’re aiming for the same audience as your competitors, there has to be that little something extra that helps you stand out (and a different way to track progress).
If you’re in the stage of your marketing strategy where you’re seeing an increase in cost per acquisition or your conversion rates are flattening, there’s a reason. This happens because performance marketing doesn’t exponentially create new demand, it captures existing demand. And that pool is finite, which is why you need to shake things up a little.
Instead of fishing in the same pond day after day, create (or discover) a new environment for your business to thrive in – that means getting a new audience. To do that, you need great branding and strong messaging. When people recognise your name, trust your products or services, and feel familiar (and aligned) with your messaging, performance campaigns start to work differently. You have seconds to capture attention these days, so having your strategy firmly anchored in a solid brand foundation is essential.
When you get it just right, you’ll start to see those click-through rates improve. Your conversion rates lift (and the cost for each of them can go down).
How Brand Drives Down CAC Over Time
While branding doesn’t always show immediate returns in the same way as strategic performance marketing campaigns, its impact becomes clear over time. This is especially true when you look at customer acquisition cost (CAC) and the lifetime value of a customer. Yes, your brand or service needs to be good and the process to order or book needs to be smooth, but people are ultimately creatures of habit. In the same way people love getting their coffee from the same shop, familiarity and trust can do a world of good in getting repeat customers, not just a one-off purchase or booking.
When your brand is known, trusted, and consistently visible, you reduce the friction in the buying process. If you’re offering something new, people are more likely to click your ads because they recognise you. They’re more likely to convert because they trust you. They’re less likely to compare endlessly because you already feel like the safer choice (because you’ve communicated that well and given them a great buyer journey).
We see it a lot in SEO when your branded search is one of the biggest keywords you’re ranking for. That’s your customers who already know and love you seeking you out once again. It’s not the only pillar you need, but it’s an important one.
Multi-channel marketing is important in this regard too when you’re angling for that first conversion. We already know that customers rarely convert after a single interaction. Instead, you need that repeated exposure across platforms builds familiarity and trust over time (like remarketing with Google ads). More exposure compounds over time.
Instead of paying more to acquire the same customer, you’re paying less to convert a warmer audience. Your performance campaigns become more efficient because your brand has already done part of the work.
Building a Full-Funnel Strategy That Actually Works
The principle behind all of this is simple: your branding establishes and reinforces identity and creates demand, and performance marketing strategy captures it. All you really need to do is find a balance of both that aligns with how people actually move through your sales funnel.
While everyone’s business is a little unique in this regard, here’s a rough outline that gives a consistent experience at each stage:
- At the top of the funnel, your focus is visibility and memorability. That’s your brand colours and imagery, product photos, language, the kind of information you have on your website (especially those trust signals). This lines up with social ads, video content, and broader reach campaigns that help to introduce your business to new audiences and start building familiarity.
- In the middle, you’re nurturing that interest and keeping what you do at the forefront of your lead’s mind. That’s where you’re retargeting, sharing more educational content that shows your authority, and adding in value-driven messaging that reminds your prospective customers why your brand is worth considering.
- To get your customers over the line, that’s when your strategic marketing really shines. This is where you introduce your high-intent and more specific search campaigns, conversion-focused landing pages, and strong offers capture the demand that you’ve been working on leading up to this point.
While each stage has different elements, the messaging and identity needs to be consistent at every point. Things like making sure your ads reflect what people have seen earlier, creating landing pages that remind them of the value in what you do (and answer any questions they may have). Consistency is key and communication is everything.
Your marketing strategy and branding are a little ecosystem, and you can’t separate one aspect without impacting all the others. While each business needs different proportions of SEO, paid ads, content, and CRO, they’ve got to be speaking the same language in order to help you reach your goal.
If you’re ready to find the right balance for your business, the Strategists and Specialists at Reform are here to help. Get in touch with us for a free consultation and we can take it from there!
