How to bring the quick wins of paid traffic AND build robust marketing for long term growth ...without your brand being seen as spammy or cheap.
Every brand struggles with this. How can you prioritise your brand while also marketing for conversions?
Usually, the type of ads that get us quick wins are brash, loud, in-your-face and hype-y, e.g. “SALE 💥 Score 30% OFF for a limited time only! Hurry, offer ends soon!”
Not exactly the type of messaging you had in mind when you brought your brand to life. You wanted ads that said something. That conveyed depth and emotion, sparked curiosity and intrigued.
The thought of attaching hype-y copy like above to your brand makes you feel queasy. But you don’t have to choose between getting conversions and staying true to your brand. It’s all about finding that perfect balance.
Better short-term conversion but worse long-term brand equity.
Performance marketing is all about snatching the low hanging fruit, optimising for quick wins and putting budget behind “attention-grabbing” content.
Worse short-term conversion but better long-term brand equity.
Brand Marketing means sticking to your guns and upholding good taste, aka going easy on the emojis and ditching all-caps.
Some brands are performance-driven. They’re there to make money and need to make it now. They aren’t particularly attached to their brand, nor do they have an inspiring brand story.
They simply wanted to create their own business and be financially successful. They don’t care if they spam people or are perpetually on sale.
There’s nothing wrong with that, it simply means performance should be prioritised over brand.
Here are some examples of performance marketing optimisations:
The problem with this approach is whether you care about your brand or not, when you prioritise performance it’s much harder to scale.
These kinds of businesses rarely attract returning customers and their AOV is usually low, making it difficult to stay afloat amidst rising acquisition costs.
Because, at a certain point, CPA inevitably creeps up and the only way to keep things profitable is to have a strong returning customer base who bring in new customers via word of mouth.
While it’s okay to adopt a performance marketing approach, don’t depend on it to hold steady in the long run.
We recommend incorporating brand marketing into your strategy from the beginning to maintain consistency in the long run. Brand-driven campaigns might run at a loss for a while but with patience, we promise they’ll pay off.
If a brand brings any of the following to mind, they’re likely to be brand-driven: luxury, inspiring, heartfelt, ethical, conscious, local, handmade and sustainable.
They’d rather close up shop than be caught dead with their name attached to obnoxious marketing.
They care about upholding the integrity of their brand more than they do conversions.
Brand marketing is a slow burn. It will take time and money before the sales start rolling in, but once they do it’s a lot easier to scale than it is with performance marketing.
Here are some examples of brand marketing:
Brand marketing is best achieved by giving people something real to connect with rather than trying to force their attention with flashing discounts. A great way to do this is to employ the power of storytelling to create a world around your brand that people are compelled to explore and connect with.
The trick with brand marketing is to stick with it and not get too caught up in the data. The only thing that separates people who succeed from those who don’t is sheer willingness to stick it out until something works. Be one of the few who make it.
Most small business owners, understandably, need quick wins from their paid campaigns. But by going in hard with “super-hot deals”, discounts and click-bait headlines, they end up damaging their brand and being seen as cheap.
It’s possible to build brand authority AND benefit from the quick wins social media provides, even though you don’t have the resources of a multi-million dollar business.
You can optimise for performance and brand by finding a balance in your messaging and marketing across a range of platforms.
For example, focus on optimising for performance across paid platforms like Facebook and Google to know you’re covering the cost of ad spend. Then focus on branding in emails, SEO, collaborations, PR and content marketing because these are generally cheaper or free. Of course, you’ll want to run a couple of branding ads and send out a few performance-driven emails but as a general strategy do as above.
SEO
Content marketing
Email campaigns
Paid social & Google campaigns
Collaborations + PR
That should cover the basics.
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