What happens when brand and performance marketing join forces

High-end per­fumes and dog food don’t have much in com­mon. How­ev­er, they’re both ben­e­fit­ing from a new dawn in the his­tor­i­cal­ly divid­ed worlds of brand and per­for­mance mar­ket­ing. 

If you’ve ever received a per­fume sam­ple in the post from beau­ty group L’Oréal or a hand gel from Unilever then you’re play­ing a part in this evo­lu­tion, accord­ing to Jon­ny Gru­bin, founder and chief exec­u­tive of prod­uct sam­pling plat­form SoPost. Some­thing sim­i­lar is hap­pen­ing at Mars Pet­care and its new direct-to-con­sumer pet food brand James Well­beloved.

Such cam­paigns help gar­ner valu­able and mea­sur­able data around the buy­ing intent and demo­graph­ics of poten­tial new cus­tomers. Beyond this, they’re also build­ing brand aware­ness.

“Get­ting a phys­i­cal prod­uct sam­ple to some­body helps dri­ve per­for­mance by cap­tur­ing data that can be fed into cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment and oth­er mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties,” Gru­bin explains. “But the sam­ple also gives mar­keters the oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve brand engage­ment through the pack­ag­ing, ‘how to use’ guides or sus­tain­abil­i­ty mes­sag­ing. It’s not just a mes­sage of buy, buy, buy; it’s a friend­lier and soft­er approach.”

At Mars Pet­care, the company’s brand and per­for­mance mar­ket­ing teams have joined up to test dif­fer­ent brand­ing and images to dri­ve the best cus­tomer con­ver­sion rate. This led to a reduc­tion in cost per acqui­si­tion of 57%, accord­ing to a recent Mar­ket­ing Week report.

Positive impact

Jor­dan James of Unlockd Mar­ket­ing is not sur­prised by the result. He says when the brand and per­for­mance mar­ket­ing dis­ci­plines com­bine, the effect can be expo­nen­tial.

Per­for­mance mar­ket­ing means cam­paigns that lead to a spe­cif­ic cus­tomer action like a lead, click or sale. In brand mar­ket­ing, longer-term cam­paigns aim to boost recog­ni­tion and rep­u­ta­tion. While a com­bi­na­tion of both sounds like a fair­ly obvi­ous approach, his­tor­i­cal­ly they have been strangers. 

Per­for­mance mar­ket­ing works best when the con­sumer already has some knowl­edge of the busi­ness and its brand mean­ing, mak­ing them more pre­pared to buy, James says. This means less expense, a short­er time from ad spend to sale and a high­er return on invest­ment. 

“It’s impor­tant to ensure that both activ­i­ties align with each oth­er for the best effect,” he adds. “You want poten­tial con­sumers to recog­nise the brand­ing from the basics such as logo, colours and tone of voice, to the more com­plex, such as pur­pose and val­ues.”

Historical differences

The dis­tance between the two dis­ci­plines is large­ly due to a cul­tur­al divide, with brand mar­ket­ing con­sid­ered more art than sci­ence and per­for­mance mar­ket­ing more sci­ence than art. They tend to be con­duct­ed by dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als and teams with dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties and focus­es. 

Per­for­mance can be seen by brand mar­keters as ana­lyt­i­cal, cold and grit­ty: the pur­suit of cost-per-click, cus­tomer acqui­si­tion cost and return on invest­ment (ROI). Per­for­mance mar­keters, mean­while, might see their coun­ter­parts as rigid, touchy-feely and too focused on the big pic­ture. 

“It can be a tall order to get them to meet in the mid­dle and cre­ate a com­ple­ment­ing cam­paign,” James says. 

It’s impor­tant to ensure that both activ­i­ties align with each oth­er for the best effect

This divide has been deep­ened by the arrival of media plat­forms like Google and Face­book, which offer bet­ter tar­get­ing, track­ing and mea­sur­ing tools: per­fect for per­for­mance mar­ket­ing. It’s shiny and new and has attract­ed not just big brands but star­tups, per­haps backed by pri­vate equi­ty or ven­ture cap­i­tal and eager to quick­ly grow sales and cus­tomer num­bers.

“Every­one recog­nis­es that brand mar­ket­ing is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant. You might dri­ve one sale with per­for­mance cam­paigns, but I would ques­tion the long-term val­ue of that cus­tomer,” says Gru­bin. “The prob­lem is that you can put a lot of mon­ey into brand mar­ket­ing, but it is hard to mea­sure its effec­tive­ness. It’s like putting your fin­ger up into the air and hop­ing for the best. With per­for­mance mar­ket­ing it is eas­i­er to show it is work­ing, that your invest­ed dol­lar has turned into dol­lar ‘x’ in rev­enue.”

Brand bounceback

How­ev­er, Gru­bin thinks the tide is turn­ing, with the brand side regain­ing ground. One exam­ple of this, he says, is that many of those busi­ness-to-con­sumer (B2C) star­tups that grew off the back of per­for­mance mar­ket­ing now realise that sus­tain­able growth means look­ing more close­ly at brand mar­ket­ing. 

“They didn’t used to both­er with brand build­ing, they just sat back and watched the dol­lars from sales come in,” he says. “But cus­tomers now want more, which means if these com­pa­nies want to become big­ger, they need to focus on brand and ser­vice.”

More estab­lished com­pa­nies are also reviv­ing brand mar­ket­ing. One exam­ple is host­ing plat­form Airbnb, which decid­ed in 2019 to reduce its mar­ket­ing spend through search engines to focus on brand build­ing. 

Chief exec­u­tive Bri­an Chesky has said Airbnb now looks at marketing’s role as one of “edu­ca­tion”, not “to buy cus­tomers”. It launched a brand cam­paign called ‘Made Pos­si­ble By Hosts’ in 2021, which the com­pa­ny says boost­ed web­site traf­fic by 20% in the fourth quar­ter of 2021.

New Apple oper­at­ing restric­tions around data pri­va­cy and track­ing may also have led a shift to brand mar­ket­ing. James says the pan­dem­ic has been anoth­er fac­tor, with con­sumers eager for more “tac­tile, fuzzy-feel­ing” mar­ket­ing. 

Major brick-and-mor­tar retail­ers switch­ing to ecom­merce and direct-to-con­sumer ser­vices dur­ing lock­down have also upped their brand mar­ket­ing, though they also relied more heav­i­ly on per­for­mance mar­ket­ing online.

Combined benefits

Despite the grow­ing empha­sis on brand, exam­ples of major firms com­bin­ing brand and per­for­mance mar­ket­ing teams like Mars Pet­care are thin on the ground to date. 

“It’s all very nascent but it is hap­pen­ing. Per­for­mance mar­keters are increas­ing­ly see­ing the val­ue of brand mar­ket­ing,” says Tom Roach, vice pres­i­dent of brand plan­ning at dig­i­tal con­sul­tan­cy Jel­ly­fish.

He thinks plat­forms like Google and YouTube will be the key hunt­ing ground for such com­bi­na­tions. “Whether you want to build your brand with some­one so they think of you in the future, want to nudge some­one who’s in the mar­ket now towards buy­ing your brand, or need to con­nect your brand with some­one who already knows they want it, the plat­forms have more influ­ence on con­sumers than ever before. They are all on there,” he says. “The plat­forms are both sales dri­vers and brand builders for your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.”

In the future, Roach expects to see more auto­mat­ed inte­gra­tion of brand build­ing and sales acti­va­tion in cam­paigns. 

“When you click on some­thing to trig­ger a sale in a search ad, it will have brand assets baked into it. These will include copy and graph­ics more aligned to the brand voice,” he says.

This will be enabled by brand mar­keters cre­at­ing con­tent that feels native to these plat­forms. Their work will be sup­port­ed by their own use of Google and Insta­gram in their leisure time as con­sumers. 

Holistic KPIs

Michael Loren­zos is head of per­for­mance and growth at dig­i­tal bank Sil­ver­bird. He says it will still be nec­es­sary to retrain both brand and per­for­mance mar­keters to move away from the cur­rent silo men­tal­i­ty. Mar­keters on both sides should be made account­able for the same met­rics when launch­ing cam­paigns. 

“Don’t stress try­ing to work out if con­ver­sions were from brand or per­for­mance. Realise that per­for­mance is just anoth­er way of deliv­er­ing the brand mes­sage,” he says. “Put your mar­ket­ing plan on a sin­gle page and define pri­or­i­ties for every quar­ter. Also encour­age syn­er­gies between the brand mar­keters and per­for­mance mar­keters and reward them for actu­al­ly deliv­er­ing on those syn­er­gies.”

For exam­ple, both dis­ci­plines could share key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors (KPIs) around click-through rates and impres­sions in a com­bined cam­paign. Per­for­mance mar­keters could also be reward­ed for high­light­ing new cus­tomers to brand mar­keters.

“Cus­tomers buy on trust and if they see a brand wrapped around a per­for­mance ad, they will be more like­ly to make the pur­chase,” he says. “These two dif­fer­ent belief sys­tems may final­ly be com­ing togeth­er.”

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