AMBASSADOR MARKETING

Brand Marketing vs. Performance Marketing: Here’s What You Should Pick

$80 million are lost EVERY YEAR because of poor marketing decisions.

Every business faces a crucial decision when it comes to marketing strategies: should they invest in brand marketing to build long-term recognition or prioritize performance marketing for quick, measurable results?

Well, both approaches have their merits, but knowing when and how to use each can make all the difference in achieving your business goals.

In this blog, we'll dive into the core differences between these two strategies and how you can effectively integrate both to drive success.

We'll cover:

• A brief overview of brand and performance marketing
• Pros and cons of each approach
• Key differences between brand and performance marketing
• How to balance both types of marketing plans for optimal results

P.S. Struggling to track the right metrics for your campaigns? inBeat.co offers multiple free tools that help you calculate key performance metrics like CPM, CTR, CPA, and engagement rate. Moreover, it helps you assess the authenticity of influencers and find the perfect micro and nano influencers for your campaigns—quickly and easily. Book a free demo now!

What Is Brand Marketing?

Brand marketing is the strategy of creating a strong, positive perception of a company in the customer's mind.

This is achieved through elements like logo, design, mission statement, and a consistent theme across all marketing channels.

The focus is on shaping how customers perceive the brand over time, fostering trust and loyalty.

Objectives:

• Build brand awareness
• Establish brand loyalty
• Create an emotional connection with the audience

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” — Jeff Bezos

What Is Performance Marketing?

Performance marketing is a digital marketing model where advertisers pay only for specific, measurable outcomes, such as clicks, leads, or sales.

This is the difference from traditional marketing, where payment is made regardless of results.

The advantage of performance marketing is that you can maximize your marketing budget by optimizing your strategies to get these measurable results.

Objectives

• Drive immediate actions like clicks, sign-ups, or sales
• Achieve clear, measurable results tied to specific KPIs (key performance indicators)
• Optimize return on investment (ROI) by focusing on campaigns that generate the highest

Pros and Cons of Each Approach

Both brand and performance marketing have advantages and challenges, which you might have inferred already.

Understanding the strengths and limitations of each can help you choose the right strategy for your business objectives.

So, here they are at a glance:

Brand Marketing

Performance Marketing

Key Differences Between Brand and Performance Marketing

Brand and performance marketing differ in their primary focus and objectives.

While both aim to drive business growth, they take different approaches to achieve it.

1. Focus

Brand marketing focuses on long-term goals such as building recognition, trust, and customer loyalty.

It aims to shape perceptions and establish a strong brand identity over time through broad-reaching strategies like content marketing, social media engagement, and brand ambassadors.

In contrast, performance marketing targets immediate, measurable results, such as sales, leads, or conversions.

It’s driven by data and focuses on optimizing ROI through precise tactics like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, affiliate marketing, and retargeting.

2. Goals

Brand Marketing Goals

• Establishing a unique identity: Brand marketing creates a distinct identity that sets a company apart from its competitors. And that’s a good thing because companies with strong brand identities see up to 23% more revenue.
• Building trust and credibility: Strong brand marketing builds trust with the audience, which is essential for long-term customer relationships.
• Enhancing customer loyalty: Effective brand marketing builds loyalty. Loyal customers are five times more likely to make repeat purchases and become advocates.

Besides, brand marketing supports all your marketing and advertising efforts.

That’s not necessarily a goal per se, but it’s what happens when you lay a foundation of trust and recognition.

This improves the effectiveness of campaigns across all channels.

Even better, it commands premium pricing because you have a strong brand equity.

In fact, brands with high perceived value can charge 13% more in premium pricing than competitors.

Performance Marketing Goals

• Driving measurable results: The goal is achieving specific outcomes like clicks, leads, or conversions with clear tracking and reporting.
• Increasing ROI: The focus is on maximizing return on investment by optimizing campaigns based on performance data. For example, businesses using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising have reported an average ROI of 200%. This shows the effectiveness of performance-based approaches.
• Acquiring quality leads: While targeting immediate outcomes, performance marketing also reaches a wider audience, maintaining measurable engagement metrics. The point is to attract potential customers who are more likely to convert into paying users or clients.
• Enhancing customer engagement: Through targeted ads, personalized offers, and call-to-actions, performance marketing drives higher customer interaction. Personalized ads can increase engagement by up to 50%.

Pro tip: Test and refine campaigns to improve efficiency and scale successful strategies. Studies show that A/B testing can increase conversion rates by up to 49%.

Basically, performance marketing allows you to reduce ad spend wastage by focusing on high-performing channels.

Track and analyze user behavior to adjust your strategies, though. Analyzing consumer behavior helps refine campaigns for better results.

That way, you’ll ensure higher conversions at each stage of the customer journey.

3. Measurement and KPIs

How to Measure Brand Marketing

To effectively measure brand marketing, businesses use a range of metrics that assess customer perceptions, engagement, and overall brand health.

These metrics help identify the success of brand-building efforts and provide insights for future strategies.

Below are some brand marketing metrics and KPIs:

• Customer feedback: Tracks Net Promoter Score (NPS), reviews, and ratings to gather insights on customer satisfaction and experiences.
• Audience engagement: Measures likes, shares, comments, and video views to analyze how audiences interact with the brand across platforms.
• Website traffic and interaction: Monitors visits, bounce rate, and time spent on site to assess digital engagement driven by brand efforts.
• Share of Voice (SOV): Analyzes media mentions and social presence to compare the brand’s visibility against competitors.
• Brand sentiment: Uses sentiment analysis and surveys to identify audience perception as positive, neutral, or negative.
• Brand awareness: Tracks impressions, recall, and recognition to understand how well the brand connects with its audience.
• Search engine visibility: Measures organic rankings and brand-related searches to monitor discoverability in search engines.
• Brand equity: Evaluates perceived value and trust levels to measure the brand’s long-term market strength.
• Customer loyalty and retention: Tracks repeat purchases and loyalty program participation to gauge customer retention success.

How to Measure Performance Marketing

Measuring performance marketing involves tracking key metrics that gauge the immediate effectiveness and efficiency of digital campaigns.

These metrics provide insights into how well campaigns are driving conversions, optimizing costs, and generating returns.

Below are the key performance marketing metrics used to measure the success of your campaigns:

• Click-through rate (CTR): Measures the percentage of people who click on an ad after seeing it. Formula: (Clicks ÷ Impressions) × 100.

inBeat.co’s free CTR calculator allows you to track your click-through rates across multiple channels.

• Cost per click (CPC): Tracks how much is paid for each click on an ad. Helps assess the cost-efficiency of campaigns.
• Conversion rate (CR): Calculates the percentage of users who take a desired action (e.g., purchase, sign-up). Formula: (Conversions ÷ Clicks) × 100.
• Cost per conversion (CPC): Measures the cost of acquiring a single conversion. Formula: Total Ad Spend ÷ Conversions.
• Return on ad spend (ROAS): Tracks the revenue generated for every dollar spent on ads. Formula: Revenue ÷ Ad Spend.

To easily calculate and optimize your ad spend effectiveness, You can use inBeat.co’s free ROAS calculator.

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): Evaluates the cost of acquiring a new customer across campaigns. Formula: Total Marketing Costs ÷ New Customers Acquired.
• Impressions: The total number of times an ad is displayed to users, indicating reach and visibility.
• Engagement rate: Measures user interactions like likes, comments, shares, or video views relative to impressions.
• Bounce rate: Tracks the percentage of users who leave a landing page without taking any action. Lower rates indicate better performance.

inBeat.co’s free bounce rate calculator can help you easily evaluate bounce rates for multiple websites or landing pages and make adjustments accordingly.

• Lifetime value (LTV): Assesses the total revenue a customer generates throughout their relationship with the brand. Formula: Average Purchase Value × Number of Purchases × Customer Lifespan.
• Cost per mille (CPM): The cost of 1,000 ad impressions. Useful for measuring brand awareness campaigns.

For a quick and accurate calculation of your CPM, check out inBeat.co's free CPM calculator—a simple tool to optimize your ad spend.

• Quality score: A metric (used in platforms like Google Ads) that evaluates the relevance and quality of ads, keywords, and landing pages.
• Retargeting conversion rate: Tracks the percentage of users who convert after being shown a retargeted ad.
• Churn rate: Measures the percentage of customers lost over a specific period. Indicates retention success.

4. Time Horizon

Brand Marketing

Brand marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building results over time.

It lays the groundwork for future customer loyalty and brand awareness.

Success requires sustained investment, consistent messaging, and ongoing efforts to strengthen brand equity.

Performance Marketing

Performance marketing campaigns deliver quicker results, focusing on immediate conversion metrics.

Campaigns can be adjusted in real time based on performance, allowing for fast pivots.

ROI and campaign success are typically measured in days, weeks, or months.

5. Channels and Tactics

Brand Marketing Channels and Tactics

Brand marketing uses a mix of channels and tactics to build awareness and long-term loyalty.

Each method focuses on connecting with audiences and establishing trust through consistent messaging and strategic positioning.

• Social media marketing: Builds engagement and promotes relationships through platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter.
• Content marketing: Delivers valuable content to attract, engage, and retain customers.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Increases organic visibility by optimizing content for search engines.
• Email marketing campaign: Nurtures customer relationships through personalized and targeted email campaigns.
• Brand ambassadors: Leverages trusted influencers to increase credibility and reach. However, you need long-term influencer partnerships if your goal is to define your brand image with consistent messaging.

P.S. Wondering how to find authentic influencers? Don’t worry! inBeat.co allows you to find the perfect micro or nano influencers for your campaign in seconds. Our powerful search engine helps you filter influencers by followers, location, language, engagement, and more.

• Public Relations (PR): Enhances brand reputation through media coverage, press releases, and public appearances.
• Outdoor advertising: Uses billboards, transit ads, and posters for wide-reaching, high-visibility brand exposure.
• Word-of-mouth marketing and referrals: Encourages organic promotion through satisfied customers and brand advocates.
• Event sponsorships and participation: Engages directly with audiences through events and brand activations.

In a recent podcast, Christelle Flahaux, CMO at Fabric, shared insights on leveraging storytelling to drive brand marketing and demand generation. She discussed the importance of crafting compelling narratives, strengthening market positioning through content, and using events to build relationships and trust in competitive industries.

For a deeper dive, watch the complete podcast of David Morneau of inBeat with Christelle on YouTube.

P.S. Want to learn the secrets behind top marketing strategies from industry experts? Subscribe to Growthnotes, our weekly newsletter that delivers actionable insights straight to your inbox!

Performance Marketing Channels and Tactics

Performance marketing strategies focus on measurable, ROI-driven tactics.

These channels are designed to drive immediate actions and optimize campaign performance based on data and real-time insights.

• Search engine marketing (SEM): Uses paid search ads to increase visibility and drive targeted traffic to landing pages.
• Social media advertising: Places ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to reach specific audience segments.
• Affiliate marketing: Partners with affiliates to promote products in exchange for a commission on sales or leads generated.
• Display advertising: Uses banner ads and rich media on websites to increase brand visibility and encourage engagement.
• Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns: Charge advertisers only when users click on their ads, ensuring a cost-effective model for driving traffic.
• Programmatic advertising: Automates ad buying using AI to serve the most relevant ads to target audiences.
• Native advertising: Creates ads that blend seamlessly with content to improve user engagement without disrupting the experience.
• Retargeting and remarketing: Re-engages users who have already interacted with the brand to encourage conversions.

Similarities Between Brand Marketing and Performance Marketing

Brand marketing and performance marketing share common principles in how they approach their strategies.

While their tactics and timeframes differ, they ultimately work towards similar business outcomes.

Key similarities between brand marketing and performance marketing include

1. Customer-centric approach: Both focus on understanding the target audience and tailoring strategies to meet their needs and preferences.
2. Goal-oriented: Both aim to achieve specific business objectives, such as increasing awareness, engagement, or conversions.
3. Data-driven approaches: Both rely on data to analyze campaign effectiveness and optimize future efforts.
4. Multi-channel strategies: Both use various platforms like social media, email, and websites to reach audiences.
5. Customer journey focus: Both align efforts to guide potential customers through awareness, consideration, and decision stages.

Balancing Brand and Performance Marketing

Combining brand and performance marketing enables businesses to drive both immediate sales and long-term success.

Performance marketing generates quick, measurable results, while brand marketing builds trust and customer loyalty.

This balanced approach supports sustained growth because you’re getting both better short-term performance and long-term customers.

MANSCAPED’s Journey from D2C to Omnichannel Success

MANSCAPED, a leader in men’s grooming, offers a perfect example of balancing performance marketing with brand marketing.

Initially thriving as a D2C-first brand, MANSCAPED leveraged performance marketing to rapidly scale through targeted digital ads and creator partnerships.

This strategy allowed the brand to:

1. Test and learn quickly: Small creative bets delivered measurable, real-time results.
2. Break barriers: Compete with legacy brands by showing up in premium digital spaces.
3. Drive early growth: Fast customer acquisition and brand recognition.

However, as MANSCAPED grew, performance marketing hit limitations, such as audience saturation and rising acquisition costs.

To scale further, the brand transitioned to an omnichannel approach with a stronger focus on brand marketing.

Key strategies included:

• Expanding retail partnerships with carefully planned campaigns.
• Balancing immediate performance goals with long-term brand-building investments.
• Redefining internal metrics to align with broader marketing objectives.

The shift required leadership, patience, and cultural change, as brand marketing typically involves delayed ROI and longer planning cycles.

Maintaining its creative ethos and humor-driven messaging, MANSCAPED positioned itself for sustainable growth.

This case highlights the importance of rebalancing brand and performance marketing to support evolving business goals.

How to Choose the Right Strategy for Your Business

Choosing the right marketing strategy means aligning your approach with the unique goals and resources of your business.

Each strategy offers distinct advantages, so it’s important to evaluate your needs and context before deciding.

1. Assess Business Goals

Always start with your core business objectives, whether it’s long-term brand loyalty, quick conversions, or a mix of both.

Align your marketing strategy with these goals.

Brand marketing is ideal for building recognition and trust, while performance marketing works well for driving measurable results and short-term actions.

2. Consider Your Budget Allocation

Evaluate your available resources to determine how much you can allocate to brand and performance marketing.

Smaller businesses or startups may benefit from performance marketing to achieve quick returns, while larger companies with more budget flexibility can invest in brand-building efforts for long-term growth.

3. Analyze the Industry

Look at competitors within your industry and consider their marketing approaches.

Some industries, like fashion and consumer goods, may benefit more from brand-focused strategies, while sectors like tech or e-commerce might achieve faster returns with performance marketing.

4. Market and Audience Analysis

Understand your target audience’s behaviors, preferences, and pain points.

For example, if your audience responds well to direct offers, performance marketing may be more effective.

Conversely, if you're building a niche or premium product, a brand-driven approach will help establish long-term value and customer trust.

When to Use Brand and Performance Marketing

Here are some situations when it’s best to focus mostly on brand marketing or performance marketing. Of course, it’s always a good idea to combine both, but we’ll discuss that in a second.

When to Use Brand Marketing

For example, Peloton is now trying to attract a new niche and, thus, focus on longer-term goals.

Addressing the same target market with the same messages led to diminishing returns and stocks crashing.

That’s why Peloton is now using brand marketing to make a comeback.

“Teams’ targets were tied to short-term sales metrics, leaving little budget available for longer-term brand building marketing, Weinberg said. The short-term mindset also left Peloton targeting the same amorphous group of customers over and over again—fitness enthusiasts.” (Katie Deighton, WSJ)

The following are other situations where brand marketing shines:

• Long-term brand recognition and loyalty: When building lasting connections and a solid brand presence is the goal.
• Launching a new product or entering a new market: When awareness and familiarity are key to gaining traction.
• Differentiating from competitors: When establishing a unique brand identity is essential for standing out.
• Creating emotional connections: When the goal is to forge deeper bonds with your audience for sustained success.

When to Use Performance Marketing

Performance marketing is best when immediate results are essential. F

ollowing are situations where this strategy excels:

• Immediate, measurable results: When you need quick action such as clicks, leads, or sales.
• Optimizing ROI: When focusing on the best possible return on investment in a short period.
• Targeting specific customer segments: When you want precise, data-driven campaigns to reach the right audience.
• Running time-sensitive promotions: When driving conversions for limited-time offers or seasonal campaigns.

How to Combine Performance and Brand Marketing (with inBeat.co)

To effectively combine performance and brand marketing, leveraging the right tools is key.

Using inBeat.co’s comprehensive set of free tools, you can seamlessly bridge the gap between long-term brand building and short-term performance metrics.

Tools like the Instagram and TikTok engagement rate calculators help ensure that your influencer campaigns are data-driven and measurable.

Besides, the ROI calculator helps you track the financial success of your campaigns in real-time.

At the same time, you can use some awesome free ad mockup generators for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and TikTok to create visually compelling ads that align with your brand identity.

These tools let you A/B test different formats so you can optimize for the best-performing versions.

Moreover, the paid marketing calculators, including ROAS, CPC, and CTR, allow you to track and optimize the performance of your paid campaigns.

Ultimately, combining brand marketing’s long-term focus with the precision of performance marketing requires ongoing monitoring and adjustment.

With inBeat.co’s free tools, you can continually refine your approach to ensure that both brand growth and measurable results go hand in hand.

Ready to power up and scale your campaign? Check out our free marketing toolkit TODAY.

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