Performance marketing became a greater focus as digital marketing platforms developed, and slowly became the focus for many businesses. It felt quicker, more measurable, and therefore, more ‘effective’ than brand marketing. However, now AI is accessible to all businesses, the value of good brand storytelling is gaining new appreciation. 

So, this tidal turn begs the question; which should my business invest in? 

In this blog, we will help you answer this question by exploring the difference between performance marketing vs brand marketing, the benefits of each, and how they can best work together. 

What is performance marketing vs brand marketing?

What is performance marketing? 

Performance marketing is a short-term marketing approach focused on paying for immediate results. These strategies tend to use search engines or social media to advertise to specific audiences, such as GoogleAds. 

These campaigns are data-driven and have explicit goals. For example, for people to book a call, buy a product, or download sales material.  

What are its benefits? 

The benefits of performance marketing campaigns are their fast and direct outcomes.  

• Immediate results: the outcomes of your efforts materialise quickly, whether good or bad. If it’s working, you get results immediately. If it’s not working, you can figure out why in real time and make adjustments. 

• Measurable: performance campaigns are inherently data-led and easy to report on. You can set SMART goals, track the associated metrics, and make clear conclusions from your numbers. 

• Clear return: actions are directly linked to results in reporting. An ad produces a click, and a meeting booked, or it doesn’t. This also makes it easy to calculate return on investment (ROI) and make budget decisions accordingly. 

• Targeted: when you’re paying for ads, you can define which audience you want to target. You can also target specific searches which means audiences may be somewhat pre-qualified.

How is it measured? 

Performance metrics will be determined by your marketing objectives. For example, whether you’re asking people to buy a product or book a demo. But these are some of the most common metrics: 

• Cost per acquisition 

• Return on ad spend 

• Cost per mile 

• Click through rate 

• Cost per click

What is brand marketing? 

Brand marketing is focused on building long-term brand equity. The goal is to build a recognisable presence, positive marketing perception, and trust with your target audience. A strong brand identity also helps to drive greater customer loyalty long-term. 

Brand strategies involve content marketing, partner marketing, and other activities that reinforce this desired perception. For example, by consistently telling related stories through blogging, or evoking your core values through affiliate work.

How is it measured? 

• Brand awareness 

• Brand visibility 

• Brand sentiment 

• Net promoter score (NPS) 

• Share of market voice 

You can also consider some quantitative metrics like social media followers, or website traffic, to indicate how brand marketing efforts may be impacting business success overall. If you’re getting more visitors, your brand visibility is likely on the rise. 

Explore brand marketing services and what they can do for you. 

Why performance marketing can’t replace brand marketing 

Marketing conversion is tough in B2B markets. Sales cycles are long, buyers are niche, and it’s increasingly hard to build trust in saturated, highly competitive markets. In theory, performance marketing bypasses these hurdles and puts you directly in touch with your ideal buyer. 

From experience, many companies want to use performance marketing as a ‘fast pass’ to sales. But in the world of B2B, there is no skipping the queue.

B2B buyers consume roughly 13 pieces of content before making a purchase decision – FocusVision Research

Take business SaaS products for example.  

A customer’s potential investment is much higher than in B2C; they are unlikely to make a decision on a whim. 

A prospect will likely spend weeks or months researching providers. This might include watching demos, reading reviews, comparing technical features or costs, making business cases, and have several human sales calls before committing (at minimum).  

In contrast, B2C customers may be willing to take a risk on a new clothing or tech brand. Depending on the price, it may only take one advert about a seasonal discount to close the sale. 

Clearly, trust, awareness and education play a much stronger role in B2B sales cycles. That’s why performance marketing without brand marketing tends to fall flat. 

Related: Email marketing tips to support your B2B sales and marketing funnel 

How AI is increasing the need for strong branding  

The increase of AI-generated or AI-assisted marketing is also reinforcing the value of brand marketing. More companies are hiring content writers and storytellers – even tech companies that are actively invested in AI, such as OpenMind and Microsoft. 

In short, decent content is accessible to everyone thanks to LLMs like ChatGPT or Gemini. Any business can whip up a good blog, or an entire marketing plan tailored to their own niche audience and solution. 

As a result, human storytelling, unique perspectives, and authentic brand voices are helping businesses to stand out. Brand marketing is the “new” competitive advantage. 

“the ease with which gen AI spits out content has ironically revved the demand for human communicators.” – Business Insider

You may like this blog that highlights examples of real brand marketing services at work. 

How brand building can work with performance marketing 

Despite the value of great branding, it shouldn’t be your only strategy. Direct sales efforts like pay-per-click or LinkedIn ad campaigns are still useful. What needs to be considered is when you introduce them. 

For B2B companies, ads work best when you have already built trust through brand marketing.

Consider the sales funnel again.  

Brand storytelling engages early-stage audiences, creates emotional connections, and gradually establishes your reputation in their eyes. Now, you have formed a strong relationship. 

Performance marketing is your closer. It can now be used to convert prospects who know you and are ready to make a decision. Without brand marketing to fill up this pool of prospects, your conversion rate and ROI will suffer. 

You may like: What strategic marketing for tech and science leaders looks like 

A rough breakdown in budget allocation 

The industry standard split is often 70:30 brand vs performance marketing. However, this is dependent on various factors. 

1. Maturity – a newer business will inherently have a lesser-known brand, and may want to invest more heavily in brand marketing. 
2. Sales cycle – depending on how quick your acquisition process is, performance marketing may be more or less effective. A brand that is more reliant on deep relationships may prefer to focus on brand building. 
3. Deal size – if you only need a few sales to meet your targets, and have time to win them, paid ads may not be a necessary investment. 
4. Data – the value of performance marketing relies on the quality of your data analysis. You need good CRM tools and the ability to monitor analytics to make the most of it. 

Have you got the balance between performance and brand marketing right? 

We can provide a free audit of your brand marketing and provide some quick wins to get you started. 

Book here to get started 

Look to your brand first 

Most importantly, we’d suggest taking your cues from brand marketing metrics. Once these start to improve – indicating that you have built recognition with your target audience – you can consider performance marketing. 

Alternatively, start with a campaign that leads to a brand marketing workflow. In other words, a demand generation campaign. Your ROI will look a bit different – visitors or downloads instead of sales leads – but it will help to generate awareness with new audiences. 

Ultimately, your focus on performance tactics will likely change with time. You may invest more when sales targets change, or when a new product is released. 

In contrast, branding remains the foundation upon which your marketing success is built. It requires consistency, and longevity, and therefore it should be a consistent focus from your marketing team.