Brand Building vs Performance Marketing: Differences and How to Use

Jojo Furnival & Gift Chidinma were paired up as part of The FCDC’s mentorship program in 2024. They decided to collaborate on this article about brand building vs performance marketing and how each discipline interacts with SEO. The first part is written by Gift.

A marketer’s biggest fear can sometimes be questions like, "So how does this campaign contribute directly to revenue?" or "What's the ROI on the campaign so far?" These questions are particularly common where teams need to balance immediate revenue needs with long-term brand building or justify marketing investments. It feels even more complex when you must align SEO, content, brand, and growth to scale marketing efforts.

I've lived that life.

As a marketer who has spent most of her career on small teams, usually as a one-person content marketer on the growth team, there's always pressure to prove sustainability in both long-term brand campaigns and tactics for performance marketing.

In this article, we'll discuss in detail the differences and similarities of brand and performance marketing campaigns, with clear examples to help align your marketing efforts. We'll also explore where SEO sits within each area.

Contents:

• What is brand marketing?
• What is performance marketing?
• The differences between brand building and performance marketing
• What role does SEO play in brand and performance marketing?
• How to integrate and use both brand and performance marketing

What is brand marketing?

Brand marketing encompasses marketing campaigns and tactics designed to showcase, tell, and sell a company's vision, mission, and reputation. It's how a company sells its unique perspective, and identity to build a personality or image in the long run that helps them stand out to their prospective customers.

As Amber Adams, Paid Social Director at The Social Shepherd, puts it:

Brand marketing dates as far back as the 1950s in the popular days of TV commercials and print ads. A well-known example is De Beers’ iconic 1949 campaign, “A Diamond is Forever,” which became one of the most memorable slogans in the jewelry industry and helped solidify the brand’s timeless image.

Source

Brand marketing or brand-building attribution metrics aren’t about instant results; they’re meant to leave a lasting impression for when someone is ready to buy, whenever that may be.

For example, I never used an Apple gadget or product until 2024, but I knew the different ranges of products and their use cases. I wasn't ready to buy for a while, but when I was, I knew exactly which product to get. That's the power of lasting impressions.

Speaking of impressions, let’s clear up a common misconception about brand marketing that might be holding some B2B SaaS companies back.

There’s a myth that brand marketing is only for big corporations with massive advertising budgets or consumer products that rely on emotional connection. False. B2B companies, early-stage startups, and software companies—regardless of their stage—can benefit from brand marketing. It's all about balancing and understanding how to execute brand marketing campaigns for long-term business growth and how to incorporate them into marketing strategies easily, whether performance- or growth-focused.

A good example of a B2B startup brand campaign is Kit’s (formerly ConvertKit) "Find Your Audience Faster" campaign, launched in 2024, which focused on how Kit helps creators build their audiences and accelerate their path to success.

Source

Key components of brand marketing

Let's briefly highlight the key components of brand marketing and what makes up a brand-building campaign.

1. Storytelling

This is the key ingredient in brand building. It's the ability to use stories to show that your product is the key solution to customers' problems. It includes the campaigns, messaging, production styles, and even sometimes the creatives used to sell your perception and perspectives.

2. Consistency

Another important component is ensuring a cohesive brand across all platforms—social media, websites, and advertisements—that helps build a trustworthy and instantly recognizable image.

3. Visual identity

This includes the logos, colors, and typography that support your brand’s storytelling, positioning, and messaging—and reinforce that recognition.

4. Positioning and messaging

Your positioning statement informs the messaging you put out there to build remembrance and imprint on your audience's minds. They’re at the heart of what the brand stands for and why customers should choose you.

Measuring brand marketing success

Some key metrics measured in brand marketing include brand recall, customer retention rates, and brand sentiments from social listening tools.

However, Amber Adams also emphasizes the importance of tracking specific metrics in brand marketing. She explains:

What is performance marketing?

Performance marketing consists of campaigns and strategies that target specific measurable metrics and results that drive growth in the short-term.

These campaigns are designed to generate immediate actions like leads, conversions, or sales. While businesses of all sizes use performance marketing, it’s especially common among startups seeking quick success in adoption and revenue.

The term "performance marketing" gained popularity in the early 2000s, as the popularity of social media and search engines continued to rise. Examples include tailored email marketing campaigns with specific CTR metrics, most influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, Google ads, and product adoption campaigns.

The screenshot above is an example of a Google ad, which is a type of performance marketing campaign.

Unlike my earlier example of knowing about Apple products for years before making a purchase, I will share a different experience with performance marketing through a Nigerian fintech called Opay.

I've used Opay since 2022, during the rise of Nigeria's cashless society era. I used it for daily transactions like buying internet subscriptions, paying TV bills, buying groceries, and funding transportation. I once came across the Owealth campaign by Opay that showed I could earn interest on my money in my Opay account by using the Owealth feature on the app.

This meant that instead of only making daily payments, I could earn interest on any unused cash while using this feature.

In performance marketing, this type of campaign promotes a new or existing product with an incentive, such as "Use our updated feature and receive a specific percentage off." The goal is to encourage both new and existing customers to adopt the product while monitoring metrics like feature adoption and usage rates.

Key components of performance marketing

1. Data utilization

Being a metric-driven strategy, data is a key ingredient. This means that campaign decisions are driven by data insights and analytics.

2. Targeted campaigns

Since it's focused on specific metrics and results, it targets specific audiences for efficient ad spending.

3. Immediate metrics tracking

Metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), conversions, and app downloads are monitored in real-time.

4. Optimization

As data guides campaign decisions and setups, they are continuously optimized and adjusted based on insights to maximize ROI.

Measuring performance marketing success

Timothy Davis, Senior Lead for Performance Marketing at Shopify and a consultant for brands like Pinterest, recently shared his insights on Lenny's podcast about the key metrics in performance marketing. He highlighted that the foundation of any successful performance strategy is having a solid financial partner to help ensure you're hitting your expected return on investment.

He adds:

The differences between brand marketing and performance marketing

There are two main factors that differentiate brand marketing and performance marketing: purpose and duration. Brand marketing (or building) is about establishing a business's reputation, image, and trust, and it's a long-term effort to see results. For brand marketing, consistency, detailed messaging, clear positioning, and storytelling primarily contribute to the results, which are tracked by metrics such as branded searches, social media mentions, and increases in retention and customer loyalty.

On the other hand, performance marketing is more of a quick-win strategy similar to growth hacking for faster results. These are shorter-term campaigns, using incentives like discounts, growth loops, and viral tactics to drive revenue-based results. Success is tracked by customer acquisition costs, number of signups, and sales during specific periods.

The Role of SEO in Brand and Performance Marketing

This section is written by Jojo Furnival, Marketing Manager, Sitebulb

In 2025, it’s no longer enough for SEOs to be siloed within the sphere of website optimisation. A comprehensive SEO strategy should include elements of both brand building and performance marketing, OR compliment the activities and goals of those teams.

SEO and brand building

We’ve all heard Eric Schmidt’s quote: “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”

That is as true in the realm of online search as it is offline marketing. If we agree that Google SERPs are, perhaps not exactly a “cesspool” of results but an increasingly unruly, confusing, and untrustworthy soup of content, then we can see how important brand building is to SEO. And vice versa.

As Kevin Indig recently wrote, “The whole industry of brand marketing exists because consumers seek out brands they trust.”

It’s for this reason that influential SEOs are advising brand building as a component of SEO in 2025. Sure, it’s at the bottom of Daniel Foley Carter’s list but I don’t think that’s a reflection on how important it is in relation to his other points:

He also highlights brand building for SEO in another LinkedIn post, saying, “BRAND & COMMUNITY development are key - and that's because you strengthen recurring users - negating such a reliance on single traffic sources.

Brand also helps SEO directly & indirectly - as a trust signal. … Build and strengthen your brand - give people useful things to help them engage with your brand”

And in yet another post: “My advice for SEO and digital marketing in 2025 is to seriously make more effort with multi-channel marketing, community and brand building.

There are thousands of potential traffic sources - given the volatility & misdirection from Google - now is a good time to start planning a wider strategy & focusing on building brand.”

Brand building is to SEO what digital PR is to link building: the thing that makes it stick.

SEO and performance marketing

SEO and performance marketing teams can also benefit one another. Within the landscape of search engine marketing, performance marketing usually looks like Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.

According to Search Engine Land, the benefits of aligning SEO and PPC include:

• Geographic areas with weaker SEO coverage can be covered by PPC
• The total traffic volume can be increased by targeting clicks in paid and organic for high-performing keywords
• High-cost, high-volume or low-converting (yet still important) keywords can be moved from PPC to organic search
• A/B testing of ad copy and landing pages can be fed into your organic listing and landing pages
• Test your keyword strategy in PPC before committing to long-term SEO strategies
• Target users at all customer journey stages, from research to comparison to purchase
• Increase confidence and awareness by having both strong organic and paid visibility

In fact, Grace Frohlich, SEO Consultant at Brainlabs, revealed at WTSFest London 2024 that she considers SEO and PPC “twins separated at birth”. If we reunite them and ensure they work together, we can generate the most value from search.

Sasha Lazarchuk, SEO Manager at YOYABA, recently wrote a strong article on how technical SEO can aid paid search performance, which is worth a read. She writes, “If your PPC campaigns aren’t delivering, the usual response is to tweak ad copy, adjust targeting, or reallocate budgets. And while these changes are part of the process, they can only go so far. When performance continues to stagnate or drop despite multiple shifts, it might be time to investigate a less obvious thing: your website’s technical health.”

So, as an SEO in 2025, consider how you can support your company or client’s brand building and performance marketing efforts.

Ok, now back to Gift.

How to integrate and use both brand and performance marketing

So at the start of this article, I mentioned how you can avoid the dilemma of choosing the “right” strategy by finding a balance between brand and performance marketing. This balance comes from understanding when to use each one and how to combine them for the best results.

Here’s how they can work together.

1. Cross-collaboration for a unified strategy among teams

The first point I'll highlight is understanding that both strategies are designed for a common goal: driving business growth and supporting revenue.

In one of my roles as a one-person content marketer who had to build a brand using content while working in a growth team, I focused on creating a unified strategy that delivered a consistent message across all channels. For example, whenever there was a campaign for incentives like discounts, it was my duty to ensure that content published about these offers maintained solid messaging and branding style.

Collaborate across teams and communicate the brand message so all teams are aligned.

2. Data-driven brand building

This is similar to the first point on a unified strategy. In this case, it's about using data from both strategies to guide campaigns across segments.

For example, data from social engagement on brand campaigns can guide performance marketing efforts, such as paid social strategies. Data from performance campaigns like product adoption initiatives can reveal more about user behavior and experience, which can be used to refine advertising messaging.

3. Efficient use of marketing budgets

Rather than pitting brand building and performance marketing against each other, it is increasingly recommended to measure the effects of brand-building and performance-marketing investments against a North Star metric for brand equity, which is linked to specific financial outcomes.

This enables companies to make smart decisions about how and how much to invest in brand building and performance marketing to fortify the financial contributions of both and get them working better together.

Use cases: When to use brand marketing vs. performance marketing

The decision to use brand marketing or performance marketing largely depends on your business goals and industry nature.

Luxury brands, for instance, rely heavily on brand marketing to build a certain brand perception and cultivate trust over time. Their focus is on creating a lasting emotional connection with their audience, which aligns with the high-value, aspirational image they aim to project.

The greatest luxury brands in the world spend centuries building a brand around exclusivity.

To do this successfully requires a tight control over supply, distribution, and brand perception.

But, a new wave of social media trends is changing everything.

Enter, Goyard 🧵 pic.twitter.com/mKg4g8AhnL

— Ari Murray (@arihappywick) May 3, 2023

On the other hand, non-luxury e-commerce businesses and consumer-focused companies tend to favor performance marketing, as their success often hinges on generating immediate sales. These businesses use tactics like email marketing, display ads, promo codes, affiliates, and sales representatives to drive transactions and keep their operations running smoothly.

In industries like travel, performance marketing dominates because it provides measurable results that help track booking conversions and engagement. Similarly, B2C companies, such as banks, prioritize performance marketing to monitor user behaviors like app engagement and transaction completion.

Arguably, B2B software companies lean more toward brand marketing. Since their goal is to convince entire organizations to invest in their solutions, they focus on building credibility, trust, and a strong brand reputation to win long-term partnerships.

Many companies, budget permitting, choose to execute both brand building AND performance marketing activities. This ensures customers sustain a connection to or form a particular perception of their brand AND are prompted to take a specific action or buy a certain product in a given time period.

Final thoughts

Brand and performance marketing can be used by companies of all sizes, from startups to growth-stage companies. Success lies in understanding the similarities, differences, and appropriate timing for each approach. To maximize the potential and results of both strategies, it's best to build a cross-collaborative system across respective teams rather than working in silos.

It's particularly important to note that, as a B2B software company, it's advisable to invest in brand marketing as early as possible. This helps you stay top of mind in a competitive niche or industry where your software might be similar to what competitors are selling. The key is creating a distinctive brand identity that sets you apart while maintaining a strong performance marketing foundation to drive immediate results.

You might also like:

• Navigating SERP Volatility With a Brand-Audience-First Approach
• Beginner’s Guide to Landing Page SEO
• How to Conduct an SEO Content Audit for Your Website