How to Use Brand Marketing to Improve Performance Campaigns

Brands can no longer afford to focus only on either brand marketing and performance marketing if they want to survive. Consumers are no longer willing to have a strictly transactional relationship with brands. They want a deeper connection with brands before they buy, especially in the age of digital marketing with consumers being bombarded with a constant barrage of performance marketing. You need both brand marketing and performance marketing to build trust and activate consumers to buy. If your brand relies too heavily on performance marketing, you might see a jump in sales today but it won’t build long-term relationships with your customers. This outcome sneaks up on brands that focus too heavily on performance marketing. The metrics they use to measure performance marketing success ignore what creates and perpetuates building quality relationships with consumers. So they end up generating short-lived transaction growth without building brand loyalty and end up having to work even harder to attract more new customers. Similarly, if you only use brand marketing, consumers won’t be activated to make a first or next purchase. The solution is to use both brand and performance marketing. Here are three steps to get started. 1. Use brand marketing to build trust In a recent IBM study, more than 50% of consumers reported making buying decisions based on trust. What does that mean for brands? First, it reinforced the importance of trust in generating transactions. Second, it suggests brands can build brand loyalty if they continuously build and reinforce trust through continuous brand marketing. Personalization Is a Team Effort, and Technology Is Only One Player If the consumer trusts you, they are more likely to purchase in the present. If you maintain that trust, they’re more likely to be brand loyal and buy in the future. If they don’t trust you—or don’t know enough about you to have formed an opinion—they’ll move on. And if you lose their trust or another brand interrupts your relationship through their own brand marketing, a customer is likely to move on. The most successful brands in the future will be the ones who build and maintain trust in consumers. The best way to build and keep people’s trust is to consistently engage in brand marketing that builds emotional responses in consumers, which research shows has a three-to-one impact on intent to buy versus what’s in the ad itself. Thus, to make consumers more likely to purchase when they come across your performance marketing campaigns, brands need to be putting in place brand marketing strategies that build trust by generating emotional responses in consumers. 2. Use performance marketing to generate continuous transaction volume After you’ve established trust with your customers through brand marketing, use performance marketing to target consumers with the specific intent of getting them to make their first or next purchase. With digital marketing, this is even easier to do than through traditional marketing platforms. Having built trust, more consumers will be ready to make a first or next purchase. You might even consider integrating the same emotional triggers from your brand marketing into your performance marketing. In the end, brands can see better results with their performance marketing campaigns when targeting consumers with whom they have already developed trust through brand marketing. 3. Continue brand marketing and performance marketing to increase long-term customer value In the same IBM study, consumers reported that they are willing to change buying habits if they lose trust with the brand. Thus, brand marketing becomes even more important because it creates two outcomes: building trust in new customers and keeping trust with existing customers. Moreover, with continued performance marketing, your marketing efforts will continuously move consumers through four stages of relationships with your brand: Building initial trust (brand marketing).Earning a first transaction (performance marketing).Reinforcing trust and building initial trust in new customers (continued brand marketing).Earning first transactions from new customers and additional transactions for existing customers (continued performance marketing). Over time, continuous brand marketing and performance marketing creates a virtual trust and loyalty machine attracting new customers to the brand and increasing long-term customer value by continuing to build trust and activating customers to make additional purchases.

Performance Marketing

How to Use Brand Marketing to Improve Performance Marketing Campaigns

Blending advertising strategies is the key to growth

Ryan Stoner

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Ryan Stoner