Anirban Banerjee
In the ever-changing marketing landscape, forging meaningful connections with consumers has become indispensable for businesses to succeed. By navigating this dynamic terrain skilfully, and to leave a lasting impression, foster deeper engagement, and ensure enduring success, marketers must understand the roles of brand marketing and performance marketing and find ways to unify them strategically.
Typically, performance marketing and brand building are two distinct strategies within the broader field of marketing, each with its own objectives, methods, and focus. Brand building was viewed as raising awareness, cultivating identity and forging emotional connections with its audience. It is about shaping the brand’s image, values, and associations over the long term. In contrast, performance marketing was primarily geared towards driving immediate sales and conversions like clicks, sign-ups, downloads, or leads. For instance, a battery and flashlight consumer products company can create compelling videos from consumer’s slice of life, showcasing how high-performance batteries can last longer in everyday devices, or the convenience of fast-charging torches with a strong emotive connect. By disseminating these videos across various digital platforms, the brand can cultivate a positive brand image and evoke a certain interest or preference from its audience, reinforcing the company’s commitment to quality and innovation and earning increased customer loyalty.
On the other hand, the current marketing landscape stresses the importance of performance marketing, including paid search and social media advertising, geared towards immediate revenue generation. Performance marketing enables marketers to run targeted campaigns by using social media to drive traffic towards a website for more sales, utilising clear call-to-action. Along with this, a brand can manage its Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS) by understanding landing pages and layouts on social media ad platforms to optimise their brand narrative. This allows a brand to measure its success and return on investment (ROI).
Strategies to unify performance marketing and branding:
Consistent messaging: Ensure that performance marketing campaigns convey the same brand messaging as broader branding efforts. Consistency in messaging strengthens brand recall and reinforces emotional connections. The brand’s core values, identity, and unique selling propositions are seamlessly integrated into performance campaigns.
Audience targeting: Use data-driven audience targeting in performance marketing to reach customers who align with the brand’s core values, fostering relevance and personalisation. For example, battery brands can use performance marketing platforms to target tech-savvy individuals interested in longer lasting batteries specifically designed for high-drain devices. By tailoring the ad content to showcase the USP of a certain battery range, the brand can resonate with its audience and drive conversions.
Customer journey mapping: Map the customer journey from initial exposure to conversion and beyond. Understanding how performance marketing efforts contribute to the overall customer experience helps optimise campaigns to align with branding objectives. By identifying touchpoints along this journey, brands can leverage performance marketing at each stage of the sales funnel to nurture leads and guide them towards making a purchase.
Creative cohesion: Align the creative elements with the brand’s visual identity and tone of voice. A cohesive and recognisable brand aesthetic enhances brand recall and reinforces the brand image. From visually appealing graphics to persuasive copy, performance ads resonate with the brand’s existing audience and attract new customers.
Collaboration between marketing teams: Foster collaboration and communication between performance marketing and branding teams. This synergy ensures that both aspects work seamlessly towards common objectives, creating a holistic marketing approach.
Creative strategy is also a critical aspect that benefits from a data-driven approach. With advanced ad platform technologies, marketers can deliver messages that align with customers’ current situations and positions in the sales funnel, be it building awareness or nudging them towards action. This holistic approach bridges the gap between branding and performance objectives, as both work in tandem to achieve marketing success.
The process does not end with campaign activation; continuous learning and improvement are essential for sustained success. Marketers must constantly revisit their data touchpoints, review collection methods, and understand how to combine data in meaningful and insightful ways. The ability to analyse, extrapolate, and learn from data is what allows marketers to adapt strategies, optimise campaigns, and drive better results.
The success of modern marketing lies in understanding the customer journey intricately and finding the perfect balance between brand and performance marketing through the strategic application of data-driven insights. Only with this deep understanding can marketers forge meaningful connections with consumers, foster engagement, and achieve enduring success in the ever-evolving marketing landscape.
The author is the senior vice president and SBU Head (Batteries and Flashlights), Eveready Industries India Ltd.