Brand Marketing vs Performance Marketing: Which Should You Do First?
- thedealspot1
- Nov 26
- 7 min read
At BrandedAgency.com, we’ve seen one question derail more early-stage marketing plans than almost anything else: Should you start with brand marketing or performance marketing? After working with teams across dozens of industries, we’ve learned that this decision isn’t just tactical—it shapes how efficiently you grow, how quickly you earn trust, and how much you’ll end up spending to acquire your best customers.
From our firsthand experience, the mistake most businesses make is treating these two approaches as competing priorities. They aren’t. But knowing which one to lead with—and why— can give you a real strategic advantage. In this guide, we break down the patterns we’ve seen in real campaigns, the sequencing that consistently delivers the strongest ROI, and the practical framework we use to help clients build momentum instead of burning budget.
By the end, you’ll see not only which strategy should come first, but how the right order can accelerate growth and create a marketing engine that performs better at every stage.
Quick Answers
Brand marketing vs performance marketing
Brand marketing builds demand. Performance marketing captures it.
Brand marketing:
Builds long-term equity and recognition
Measured by awareness, recall, and share of voice
Takes months to years to compound
Effects grow stronger over time
Performance marketing:
Drives immediate, measurable actions
Measured by clicks, leads, conversions, and ROAS
Delivers results in days to weeks
Effects decay quickly without brand support
The data: Research shows the optimal split is 60% brand, 40% performance. Brand outperforms performance 80% of the time on ROI.
The truth: Your performance campaigns are only as strong as the brand behind them. Clicks are cheap. Preference isn't.
Top Takeaways
Brand marketing should come first because it builds the trust and clarity that performance campaigns depend on.
Performance marketing becomes more efficient when audiences already understand who you are and why you matter.
The right sequence—brand first, performance second— consistently reduces acquisition costs and improves ROI.
Strong trust signals and consistent branding directly influence conversion rates across all channels.
Integrated marketing works best: a clear brand fuels smarter, faster, and more scalable performance results.
Table of Contents
Understanding the Difference
Brand marketing focuses on building recognition, trust, and long-term preference. It shapes how people feel about your business—your story, your values, and the promise behind your product or service.
Performance marketing, on the other hand, is built for measurable, short-term results. Every action—clicks, leads, purchases—is tracked, optimized, and tied back to ROI.
Both matter. But they deliver value on different timelines.
Why the Order Matters
In our work at BrandedAgency.com, we’ve found that campaigns perform significantly better when the brand groundwork comes first. A clear brand story, strong messaging, and consistent identity make every performance campaign more efficient because your audience already understands who you are—and why they should care.
Without that foundation, performance efforts often become more expensive and less effective, since you’re asking people to convert before they trust you.
The Recommended Sequence
1. Start With Brand Marketing
Establish your identity, clarify your value proposition, and build early credibility. This doesn’t require a massive campaign—just enough clarity and consistency to position your business confidently.
2. Follow With Performance Marketing
Once your story and positioning are in place, performance channels like search ads, social ads, and retargeting work far more efficiently. You’ll convert at lower costs and build momentum faster.
The Bottom Line
You don’t have to choose one over the other. But if you want the strongest start, lead with brand marketing to create trust—and then activate performance marketing to scale your results. This balanced sequence gives businesses the stability of a strong brand and the agility of measurable, ROI-driven execution.
“When we’ve guided brands from the ground up, the biggest performance gains always come after a clear story is in place. Brand marketing isn’t a ‘nice-to-have’—it’s the multiplier that turns every performance dollar into real growth. We’ve seen over and over that the brands who invest in clarity first scale faster, spend less, and earn trust sooner.”
Essential Resources for Brand Marketing vs. Performance Marketing
1. The Research That Ended the Argument
Binet and Field analyzed 600+ companies over two decades. Their finding? The 60/40 brand-to-performance split isn't a suggestion—it's what separates growing brands from the ones burning cash on clicks. This is ground zero for anyone serious about effectiveness.
Source: IPA Effectiveness Research – Les Binet & Peter Field
2. Brand Beats Performance 80% of the Time (Yes, Really)
Analytic Partners crunched the numbers across thousands of campaigns. Brand marketing outperformed performance marketing in 4 out of 5 cases. Even better: 30% of your paid search success? That's brand investment doing the heavy lifting. Your "performance" campaigns are riding coattails.
Source: Analytic Partners ROI Genome Report
3. Stop Guessing Your Budget Split
Gut feelings don't belong in budget meetings. Tracksuit built a calculator using Binet and Field's methodology—adjusted for your industry, price point, and growth stage. Plug in your numbers. Get a split that's backed by data, not vibes.
Source: Tracksuit Marketing Budget Calculator
4. What Airbnb and Slack Actually Do (Not What They Say)
Marketing leaders from Slack and Atlassian break down exactly how high-growth companies allocate between brand and performance at each stage. Real budgets. Real frameworks. Zero fluff about "building authentic connections."
Source: First Round Review – A Founder's Framework
URL:https://review.firstround.com/a-founders-framework-for-understanding-performance-vs-brand-marketing/
5. The Growth-Stage Budget Playbook
Your budget split should change as you scale. Bloom maps it out: 70/30 one way when you're launching, 70/30 the other when you're defending. One-size-fits-all allocation is a lazy strategy dressed up as simplicity.
Source: Bloom – Brand vs. Performance Marketing Guide URL:https://www.makeitbloom.com/blog/brand-vs-performance-unlocking-the-right-mix-for-business-success/
6. Why "Brand-formance" Is a Lie
Binet's latest take: trying to do brand and performance in the same ad is like trying to sprint and nap simultaneously. Strong brands make your performance ads convert harder—but only when you stop asking one campaign to do two jobs.
Source: Marketing Week – Les Binet Interview
7. Explain the Difference Without Putting Everyone to Sleep
Need to get leadership aligned on why you're not just "running more ads"? Mailchimp's guide breaks down the brand vs. performance distinction in plain language. Useful for building a strategy. Even more useful for winning budget conversations.
Source: Mailchimp Resources
Supporting Statistics
Trust drives conversions.
Pew Research: 71% of U.S. adults say data practices affect their trust in a company.
Our experience: Performance ads convert better only when trust is already established.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/18/key-findings-about-americans-and-data-privacy/
Brand presence shapes early discovery.
U.S. Census Bureau: Nearly 80% of Americans research products online.
Our insight: Strong brand visibility creates warmer, more informed traffic before ads run.
Source: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/acs-56.pdf
Reputation impacts buying decisions.
BBB: 82% of consumers check reviews and trust signals before choosing a business.
Our experience: Brands with strong credibility see faster, more efficient ad performance.
Final Thought & Opinion
Our experience shows a clear pattern:
The sequence of brand marketing and performance marketing directly impacts how efficiently a business grows.
What we’ve seen repeatedly
Skipping brand work makes performance campaigns costly and inconsistent.
Audiences hesitate when trust isn’t established first.
Teams end up reacting instead of building momentum.
What works best
Build the brand first
Create clarity, consistency, and trust.
Set the foundation for stronger conversions.
Activate performance marketing second
Scale efficiently with data-driven execution.
Lower acquisition costs and improve ROI.
Our opinion
The strongest strategies start with defining who you are and then use performance marketing to amplify that identity. This sequence consistently produces faster growth, greater efficiency, and more predictable results across every industry we’ve worked with.
Next Steps
Clarify your brand.
Define your message, value, and identity.
Build trust before running ads.
Audit your marketing.
Check for gaps in consistency or credibility.
Fix anything that weakens trust.
Refresh key brand assets.
Update website, messaging, and visuals.
Ensure everything aligns with your brand strategy.
Plan your performance strategy.
Choose channels, goals, and KPIs.
Start with high-intent audiences.
Test and optimize.
Monitor early results.
Refine targeting, messaging, and offers.
Integrate long-term.
Align brand and performance efforts.
Build a scalable, predictable growth system.
FAQ on "Brand Marketing vs Performance Marketing"
Q: What is the difference between brand marketing and performance marketing?
A: They serve different jobs:
Brand marketing builds long-term equity, recognition, and emotional connection. It makes people choose you before they start shopping.
Performance marketing drives immediate, measurable actions—clicks, leads, sales.
One creates demand. The other captures it. You can't capture demand you never created.
Q: How much should I spend on brand marketing vs performance marketing?
A: The research-backed baseline is 60% brand, 40% performance (Binet and Field).
Adjust based on your stage:
Early-stage companies: Flip closer to 65% performance to capture existing demand
Growth-stage companies: Move toward the 60/40 baseline
Mature brands: Shift to 70%+ brand investment
The right split depends on growth stage, industry, and whether you're building a market or competing in one.
Q: Which is more effective—brand marketing or performance marketing?
A: Brand marketing outperforms performance marketing 80% of the time in sales and ROI (Analytic Partners).
The part most marketers miss:
30% of paid search results are driven by brand investment happening elsewhere
Performance marketing gets the credit
Brand marketing does the work
You need both. Betting everything on performance is borrowing equity from your brand.
Q: How do you measure brand marketing success?
A: Brand won't show up in last-click attribution. That's not a flaw—it's how a brand works.
Measure through:
Brand awareness and recall studies
Share of voice
Branded search volume
Customer acquisition cost trends over time
Pricing power
The real test: Are your performance campaigns getting cheaper and more effective? That's brand investment paying dividends.
Q: Can brand marketing and performance marketing work together?
A: Yes—but not in the same ad.
How they work together:
Brand marketing warms up your audience
Performance marketing converts them more easily and cheaply
Run them in parallel, measure them differently
Think of the brand as air cover. Performance as ground troops.
Stop asking one campaign to do two jobs. That's not integration—that's confusion.
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