BrandFormance: integrating branding and performance marketing to succeed in 2023

For modern marketers, brand marketing and performance marketing are two crucial components of a comprehensive business growth strategy.

Historically, brand marketing has focused on creating a strong, recognizable brand image and establishing a long-term emotional connection with consumers. Performance marketing is intended to deliver nearly immediate and measurable results, such as qualified sales leads or actual conversions.

In challenging economic times, some marketers have cut their marketing budgets. Research from Analytics Partners found that 63% of marketers who increased their marketing spend during the 2008 financial crisis generated a positive ROI. Beyond this, marketers who increased their media spend benefitted from a 17% increase in incremental sales.

Optimal marketing for 2023

With this data in mind, how can marketers optimize their marketing spend in 2023? The recommended way to optimize marketing spend in 2023 is by integrating branding with performance marketing into BrandFormance. This approach leverages the strengths of branding with the accountability of performance marketing to achieve both short-term and long-term goals.

Research published last summer in MarketingWeek highlights the need for this integration. Among 1,610 marketers surveyed by the publication, 73.4% said that their company is focused on both brand marketing and performance marketing.

Bringing together branding and performance

Before the rise of direct marketing - the original performance marketing - marketers relied on branding and branding metrics to evaluate their campaigns. And with the rise of direct marketing and later other performance marketing channels, these efforts were run by different teams using different models.

With the rise of digital marketing, these teams utilized similar models and metrics as direct marketers and were siloed away from brand marketers.

Brand and performance marketers started working more closely together recently due to technology advancements and the rise of omnichannel marketing. In more and more marketing organizations, this has resulted in the end of multiple marketing silos. Instead, brand marketers and performance marketers are increasingly coming together and becoming part of one, unified marketing silo.

Brand marketers realized the results-driven approach of the performance marketing teams reduces costs and optimizes performance. And performance marketers understand that as a result of branding campaigns, prospects are ready to convert when they’re targeted.

So how does brand marketing drive performance marketing?

Specifically, here are three ways that brand marketing supports performance marketing:

1. Building Awareness: A strong brand identity helps build awareness and recognition among consumers. This makes it easier for consumers to remember your brand and choose it over competitors. This increased brand recognition leads to higher conversion rates and better results for your performance marketing campaigns.
2. Establishing Trust: A trusted brand can influence consumer behavior and increase the likelihood of making a purchase. This trust and loyalty translates into better results for performance marketing campaigns.
3. Driving Engagement: A well-executed brand marketing can create an emotional connection with consumers. This emotional connection drives engagement and encourages consumers to take actions which deliver results for performance marketing campaigns.

The AIDA funnel

The classic sales funnel pyramid - attract Attention, maintain Interest, create Desire, get Action - was developed by American advertising executive Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898 (‘get Action’ was actually added after 1898).

This model has been used for more than 100 years and still serves the marketing industry. With the growth of direct marketing tactics in the last 50 years, some have reworked this model into Awareness, Consideration, Conversion.

But in recent years, digital channels have been added and the purchase cycle has been shortened from months and weeks to days, and even hours. These changes have resulted in a sales funnel that is often much shorter.  This is particularly true with apps, where a user might go from being exposed to an app to installing that app in a matter of minutes.

The Building, Nudging, Connecting funnel

To update the funnel for current marketing speed, Tom Roach from Jellyfish has suggested a new funnel of Building, Nudging, Connecting. This change enables unifying both ends of the funnel with the knowledge that purchases can happen at the top, and that the brand can be built at the bottom.

Agile collaboration

According to global management consulting firm McKinsey, the core elements for getting brand and performance marketing right include:

• Be agile to learn and move quickly: marketers should pursue rigorous test-and-learn programs to capture new insights, and then act on those insights in their brand and performance marketing campaigns.
• Collaborate with agencies/partners/vendors: marketers should work closely with all of their partners, sharing all insights so that all aspects of brand and performance marketing are updated ASAP.

Based on McKinsey data, a telecommunications provider used a data-driven performance approach to understand which brand interactions contributed to conversions. By applying this approach, the company was able to increase brand consideration by 20% and increase marketing-driven conversions by 15%. A consumer goods company used Marketing Return On Investment (MROI) to determine optimal creative rotation across channels. This resulted in a 14% increase in adverting’s impact on sales.

In conclusion, BrandFormance represents a powerful and holistic approach to marketing that leverages the strengths of both brand marketing and performance marketing. By combining these two strategies, brands can achieve both short-term results and long-term growth. By prioritizing brand building and establishing a strong, trusted image, brands can drive better results for their performance marketing campaigns and achieve their desired outcomes.

Have questions regarding how you can bring together brand and performance marketing in your organization? If so, reach out to Creative Clicks today and let us show you how we’ve helped other marketers unify their marketing and improve performance and marketing ROI.