Brand vs. Performance Marketing: How to Align for Growth

Brand leaders are tasked with developing marketing budgets each year, but many struggle to balance quick wins with long-term growth. This creates a common problem: should you focus on performance marketing or brand marketing?

The answer is both, but you need to know when and how to use each approach.

What's the Difference?

Before you can balance these two approaches, you need to understand that they work in completely different ways to solve different problems for your business.

Performance Marketing
You pay only when something happens. A click, a sale, a signup. You can track everything and see exactly what works.

• Google ads that show up when people search for your product
• Facebook ads that target people who visited your website
• Affiliate programs where partners earn money for each sale they bring in

Brand Marketing
You build awareness and trust over time. It's harder to measure but creates lasting value.

• TV, print, or radio commercials that tell your company's story
• Sponsoring events or sports teams
• Content that educates or entertains your audience

Why You Need Both

Performance marketing can deliver quick results, but they don't last. Without brand recognition, you end up paying more and more for the same customers. Your ads get ignored. Your costs go up. You get stuck competing only on price.

Brand marketing takes time to work, but it builds lasting value. It makes performance marketing work better by creating trust and recognition. When people know your brand, they click your ads more often and buy more readily.

Apple is a good example of how to balance both approaches. They run performance campaigns for every iPhone launch, such as targeted ads, pre-order promotions, and time-limited trade-in offers that drive immediate sales.

But they also invest heavily in brand building through their high-end store experiences and product placements (meta spoiler alert: did you know that Apple does not allow the bad guy to use Apple products in movies and TV shows?). Even their performance ads look and feel like Apple: clean, emotional, and premium.

This means every dollar spent on quick sales also strengthens their long-term brand value.

The 60/40 Rule

So what's a good rule of thumb for allocating your budget? Many companies use this split:

• 60% of their budget goes to brand building
• 40% goes to performance marketing

Companies that follow this rule often achieve better results than those that focus solely on one approach. But not every company starts at the same spot, so your budget split should evolve as your company evolves:

Startup (finding your first customers):

• 30% brand, 70% performance
• Focus on proving your product works

Growth stage:

• 50% brand, 50% performance
• Build your reputation while growing sales

Established company:

• 60% brand, 40% performance
• Protect your market position

Mature company needing renewal:

• 70% brand, 30% performance
• Rebuild your image and try new channels

Measuring Success

You can't improve what you don't measure. But performance and brand marketing need different ways to track success.

Performance Marketing Metrics: Performance marketing is straightforward—you can see exactly how much you spent and what you got back.

• Cost per customer (how much you spend to get one new customer)
• Return on ad spend (how much revenue you get for each dollar spent)
• Click-through rates (how many people click your ads)

Brand Marketing Metrics: Brand marketing is trickier because the results show up slowly and are harder to connect directly to sales.

• Brand awareness (how many people know your brand)
• Net Promoter Score (how likely customers are to recommend you)
• Share of voice (how much people talk about you vs competitors)

Why Brand Marketing Isn't Just Vanity Metrics

Now, you may be thinking, "brand marketing is all about vanity metrics. If I can't track it to sales, it's not worth doing."

Here's the thing: companies that cut brand spending to focus only on trackable performance often see their costs go up over time.

Research by the Boston Consulting Group found that companies that cut brand spending lost 0.8 percentage points of market share compared to those that increased brand spending. Worse, regaining that lost market share costs $1.85 for every $1.00 saved from cutting brand investment.

Without brand recognition, you pay more for each click because people don't trust you. You also lose pricing power. Generic brands compete on price while strong brands are able to charge more.

I don't know about you, but I always buy the more expensive Q-tip and Band-Aid brand products vs. others because I trust that they're better.

Another way to think about it is if you were to search for "running shoes" and see an ad from Nike alongside an ad from "Atlanta Footwear Co.," which one are you more likely to click?

Nike wins because of brand trust built over years. That trust reduces their cost per click and increases their conversion rate.

Brand marketing also creates what economists call "mental availability." When people think of your category, they think of you first. Again, consider Q-tips and Band-Aids. These brands became so strong that we use their names for entire product categories.

This mental availability leads to more direct website visits, higher organic search rankings, and customers who seek you out instead of shopping around.

These benefits show up in your performance metrics, but they come from brand investments made months or years earlier. It's not that you can't measure it—the measurement just happens over longer time periods and requires better tools than last-click attribution.

Industry research shows that brand marketing is responsible for the majority of long-term sales growth, often cited as 60–80%, with leading companies like P&G and Unilever consistently reporting that sustained brand investment is essential for enduring growth and market share gains.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Most companies make the same mistakes when trying to balance performance and brand marketing. These errors can waste money and hurt your growth. Here are the big ones to watch out for:

Going too heavy on performance
If you spend more than 70% on performance marketing, your growth slows down over time. You get stuck in a cycle of paying more and more for the same results.

Ignoring measurement
Brand marketing isn't just about creativity. You need to track if it's working. Use surveys, brand studies, and attribution tools to measure impact.

Not connecting the two
Your performance ads should feel like they come from the same company as your brand campaigns. Mixed messages confuse customers.

Working With a Smaller Budget

Another common mistake is assuming that brand marketing is only for big companies with large budgets.

That's not true.

The core principles work for smaller brands too. In fact, they're more crucial because smaller brands need every advantage they can get.

Here's how mid-sized brands can approach the "small budget" challenge:

Focus on consistency over scale
Even with a modest budget, maintain a consistent brand voice, visual identity, and message across all channels. This builds recognition and trust over time.

Use creativity, not just cash
Smaller brands can stand out by telling authentic, compelling stories that resonate with their audience. Creativity often beats big spending when it comes to brand impact.

Leverage what you own
Focus on your website, email list, and social media platforms. These are channels where you control the narrative and can build a community without large ad spends.

Make smart investments
Focus your brand spend on key moments—product launches, seasonal campaigns, or community events—where you can make a real impact.

Partner up
Collaborate with like-minded brands, influencers, or local organizations to amplify your reach without overspending.

The Bottom Line

You don't have to choose between performance and brand marketing. The best companies use both.

Performance marketing gets you customers today. Brand marketing keeps them coming back tomorrow and makes acquiring new customers cheaper over time.

The companies that figure this out consistently outperform their competitors. Not because they have bigger budgets, but because they make every dollar work harder by combining both approaches.

Start where you are. Use what you have. But don't ignore either side of the equation. You need both to win.

Contact us to see how our team can help balance your performance and brand marketing investments for long-term ROI