We hear this question from marketers quite often – which should I invest time and money into, Brand or Performance Marketing? While it’s a complicated answer based on your industry and how developed you are, I’ll give you the short answer: build out and spend marketing budget on Performance Marketing first. 

The long answer is simple, if you don’t have the foundation to support the increase in traffic  on your site due to brand exposure you will have a boat with holes that’s leaking water – or in this case a funnel that has holes. 

We always think of Marketing as a funnel that drives the user with the lowest intent from the top (tofu) to the bottom of the funnel when they have the greatest intent. But, how do you do  it? Omnichannel Marketing is one proven tactic that works very well to accomplish this – and if you have gaps in this tactic you can potentially leak tofu traffic to your competitors or disinterest them entirely. For example, if you don’t have proper retargeting in place for your website visitors then why will you spend the time to create brand experience, content or even take on large sponsorship relationships – for users to come to your site and then leave without any hope of returning?

At the end of the day both Brand and Performance have to live together to drive value to the business. Performance Marketing will enable you to drive new users to your product but provide limited Life Time Value (LTV). But a user who is nurtured over time with content (guides, webinars, loyalty programs) will return a Higher LTV because they will be more encouraged and educated on product use as well as be an advocate for your brand and product to others. But first make sure you can convert the user before we explore retention programs to maintain the business – this will take time with a more thorough understanding of the user and what they need to be successful with your brand. 

So, before you think about sponsoring that sports team or event, or signing up for an expo – make sure that your Performance Marketing is in place to capture the users attention, to further engage them and drive them down the funnel to the conversion. If you can’t answer how the user will convert after seeing your Brand (other than them magically seeing the brand and searching for it online, hoping that your organic listing shows up and they spelled everything correctly and then somehow deciding to give you their information) then your Performance Marketing needs work. Don’t believe me? Check your own data, you will see that most users do not convert on the first visit to your website