In today’s competitive marketplace, it is more important than ever for businesses to build a strong brand and a well–executed performance marketing strategy. A brand can often be watered down and poorly communicated when building tactical performance marketing campaigns and focusing on channels and funnel stages. 

By aligning brand and performance marketing strategies, businesses can create a powerful marketing approach that drives both short-term sales and long-term brand and revenue growth.  

This is important, as Salsify studies show that 55% consumers said they would pay more for a brand they trust, while 80% said product quality is important when deciding what brands they will trust and support. Making it critical that your brand is authentic and consistent through every performance marketing touchpoint.  

When messages, delivered across all marketing funnel stages, are backed by a trusted brand - it presents a performance advantage that further supports well-executed tactical and strategic campaigns. 

This article will attempt to demonstrate how businesses can align performance marketing strategy and brand strategy to create campaigns that deliver results. 

To ensure each strategy is aligned, begin by: 

• Defining your brand and its key messages – a clear idea of your brand, positioning, differentiation, and messaging is critical to executing consistent high-performing campaigns that drive long-term growth.  
• Set performance marketing goals that align with your brand strategy: sales and revenue targets play a role in all performance marketing strategies, as they should! However, all marketing campaigns should also align to growing and positioning your brand. 
• Choose the right performance marketing channels – where are the most powerful digital opportunities for your brand to interact with your target customers?  
• Create compelling performance marketing content across all funnel stages, aligning to brand messages and differentiation.

By consistently and effectively doing the above, businesses can reap the benefits of increased brand awareness and customer retention, which flow through to improved results across performance marketing campaigns. 

Why is it Important to Keep Brand Story at the Centre of all Marketing Campaigns? 

• A strong, well-positioned brand builds trust within customers, resulting in improved click-through rates and furthers the opportunities to grow web traffic, leads, and sales even when launching into new product verticals.  
• Improved customer loyalty: In today’s world, your customers are served communications from competitors more than ever, even when they are searching for your brand! A strong brand will have your customers stick with you, even when they are served compelling messages or offers from competitors. Thus, giving you more budget to spend on acquiring new customers. 
• Higher conversion rates: When a brand is constantly communicated through all funnel stages, users are far more likely to purchase or enquire, leading to higher conversion rates and increased performance without increasing spend – a performance marketer’s dream!  
• Lower marketing costs: A strong brand means direct visits, brand searches, and website engagement leading to lower marketing costs and higher return on investment. Through the strategic brand position, brands are able to continue to achieve growth – without increasing marketing investment.  

In summary, a consistently messaged brand strategy helps build consumer recognition and recall. Over time, this continual exposure to brand marketing helps to build a sense of familiarity, trust, and confidence that can ensures each touchpoint contributes to the building of a strong and trusting relationship with consumers.