Brand vs Performance Marketing: Getting the Balance Right
Performance marketing drives sales now; brand marketing makes those sales easier and cheaper later. The evidence points to roughly a 60/40 split in favour of brand over the long run — and cutting brand to feed performance is the most common, and most expensive, mistake in marketing.
Two jobs, not one
Performance marketing — search ads, paid social, promotions — captures demand that already exists. Someone's ready to buy, and you win the click. It's measurable, fast and addictive, because you can see the sales roll in almost instantly.
Brand marketing does a different job: it creates and primes demand so that when people are ready to buy, they already know, trust and feel something for you. It's slower and harder to measure, which is exactly why it's the first thing nervous businesses cut — and why cutting it is such a trap.
Why you need both
Rely only on performance and you're forever renting demand at auction, bidding against everyone else for the same ready-to-buy customers, with costs that creep up as you scale. Rely only on brand and you build awareness that never converts.
The landmark effectiveness research — most famously the work popularising a roughly 60/40 split between brand-building and sales activation — found that the two work together. Brand-building makes your performance marketing cheaper and more effective, because people click, trust and convert faster when they already recognise you.
Getting the mix right
The 60/40 guideline is a starting point, not a law — the right split varies by category, how often people buy, and how established you are. A brand-new business often needs more activation to get going; an established one starving its brand is storing up trouble.
The practical discipline is to ring-fence some budget for brand even when performance is screaming for more. The temptation is always to move the next pound to the channel with the clearest short-term return — and that's precisely how businesses end up with great quarterly numbers and a brand nobody chooses on purpose.
Our take: measure performance ruthlessly, but don't let measurability decide your whole strategy. The most important marketing effects are the slow ones you can't see on this week's dashboard.
Quick FAQ
What's the difference between brand and performance marketing?
Performance marketing captures existing demand and drives sales now (and is highly measurable). Brand marketing creates and primes future demand, making later sales easier and cheaper - but it's slower to show results.
What is the 60/40 rule?
An effectiveness guideline suggesting roughly 60% of budget on long-term brand-building and 40% on short-term sales activation, on average - a starting point that varies by category and brand maturity.
Why not just do performance marketing?
Because you end up renting demand at auction forever, with rising costs. Brand-building makes performance cheaper and more effective by making people recognise and trust you first.
The hardest discipline in marketing is protecting brand spend when performance is screaming for the next pound, because performance shows you results today and brand pays you back slowly. But that's the whole game: brand-building is what makes your performance marketing cheaper. Judge the mix over years, not weeks. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
Takeaway: performance wins the quarter, brand wins the decade — and brand-building makes performance cheaper. Ring-fence brand spend even when the dashboard begs you not to.
Is your marketing budget quietly drifting all the way to short-term performance — and starving the brand that makes it work?
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
Sources: Marketing Minute analysis, drawing on established marketing-effectiveness research.
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
