Performance Marketing and Branding: Why One Without the Other Wastes Budget

A client plans to invest in paid social, paid search and influencer advertising, but overlooks the creative and website. Or they invest in brand presentation, social profiles, a visual identity and a brand book—but not in promotion.

For thoughtful design to resonate with an audience and advertising spend to pay off, branding and performance marketing should work together. We share successful and less successful cases, explain what each discipline involves and show how they can affect sales.

Elizaveta Rumyantseva, Branding Lead, and Ekaterina Rusakova, Strategy and Performance Lead

Strategy is the foundation for branding and performance marketing

Branding and performance are important internet-marketing disciplines that should be connected strategically. We see strategy as a necessary step before any work to create or strengthen a brand and promote it.

When we ask which marketing strategies suit a company, we take a systematic approach. We assess the brand’s promotion potential and suggest ways to improve how it is presented. For example, we analyse traffic sources and audit existing promotion channels while also reviewing social profiles, banners and the website, including its user interface.

Strategy provides the basis for everything that follows, including brand development and performance campaigns.

How branding depends on performance marketing

Branding creates a positive image of a company through verbal elements—its name, tagline, positioning, tone and communication style—and visual elements such as its logo, colours, website and social profiles.

A strong brand needs to reach consumers. You can come up with a highly creative tagline and a banner that follows the latest trends, but what good are they if buyers never see them? That is why strong branding needs promotion through performance marketing. Here are examples from our work.

Case studies: Jistory and Zamorkovye

In 2019, we delivered two projects with different outcomes. We developed a name and visual identity for Jistory, a jeans retailer in St Petersburg, and Zamorkovye, a farm-produce shop in Tolyatti. We also created Jistory’s communication strategy. Jistory did not continue developing its own brand, while Zamorkovye put the identity into use in its shop and Instagram profile.

Zamorkovye visual identity

Jistory visual identity

Instagram data showed the effect of combining branding and performance marketing in the second project: more people saw the distinctive identity we had invested in. The Jistory retail chain in St Petersburg had a larger potential audience than a single farm shop in Tolyatti because the cities differ in population size. That is another factor to consider.

AWM case study

Take AWM, a powersports retailer we promoted through paid search and paid social. At one point, ad performance began to decline because the client’s creatives had become familiar to the audience. We replaced the static banners with animated ones and ran A/B tests. We also added product prices, which the client had previously preferred to omit. The new creatives generated more website visits, highlighting the value of distinctive, visible advertising content.

How performance marketing depends on branding

Performance marketing is more than launching campaigns across available channels. It is a deliberate approach aimed at achieving specific, measurable results within a defined timeframe.

Promotion needs a coherent, compelling brand to succeed; the two reinforce each other. If a website is inconvenient, dated or unclear, visitors may leave before becoming leads. That is why an internet-marketing strategy should account for the relationship between branding and performance.

Advertisers have fewer opportunities to capture a potential customer’s attention. People consume less media, while the amount of information they receive each day makes it harder to focus on individual messages. That puts a distinctive visual identity and brand character at the centre of strategy. A basic banner is unlikely to stand out. And even if it leads to one sale, will the customer return?

Whatever form of branding you choose, a memorable image, a quality product and a positive service experience can encourage repeat business and recommendations.

Three important considerations for brand promotion

Creative assets and offers should stand out, be memorable and retain attention — all of this matters when developing an online promotion strategy. Here is how it works in practice.

Stand out: the Kompozit case

Standing out was essential for this new plastic-surgery clinic in a crowded market. During the analysis, we found that competitors’ offers were conventional and sometimes aggressive—for example, close-up images of faces and syringes. To attract attention, we took an associative approach. Instead of patient photos, we used graphics and visuals that drew attention without explicitly depicting procedures, while addressing the audience’s concerns with sensitivity. We developed several banners within a consistent brand style.

As a result, KompozitKompozitstood out: branded search queries doubled, and social-media enquiries increased by 75%.

Be memorable: the Digitale case

Offers do more than attract attention and support brand recall; they can also bring audiences back. This matters especially when the journey from the first click to becoming a customer takes months. That was the case with a business conference, Digitale. In planning its marketing strategy, the goal was to be memorable. We refined the positioning and chose “happiness” as the theme of the year. The theme resonated with people, and we expressed it through a new visual identity with warm orange and yellow tones blended to evoke sunlight.

The strategy was then delivered through coordinated communications: we launched more than 400 banners across offline and digital channels, including social media, email, influencers and partners, the metro and outdoor advertising. We also created an emotional video for YouTube.

Here are the digital marketing techniques we used:

Audiences kept returning to the placements—whether they were new, familiar or ready to buy. Our branding team developed a style that attracted people from paid social and retargeting who wanted to learn more or return and remember the brand. This gave the identity a chance to stay with both new and existing audiences.

We reached a record 1,700 conference attendees and received a 9/10 event rating. The campaign also delivered 2.2 million unique users reached and 32,050 unique website visits, along with other results detailed in the Digitale case study.

Retain the audience: the Eurostroy case

Offers and creative assets do more than attract attention and help people remember a brand; they can also retain an audience. This is always important, especially when the journey from first click to customer takes several months. That was the case withEvrostroy».

During the analysis, we identified several audience segments. We then developed content and promotion strategies with a long-term view.

The Eurostroy case.

Over the campaign, we repeatedly refreshed offers and creative assets, tested different formats and channels, and adapted lead forms for specific audiences. On social media and in the wider communication style, we showed the lifestyle of potential buyers, which helped maintain their interest in the brand. Conversions increased by 30%, while their cost fell tenfold.

How can you measure the effectiveness of branding and performance?

As discussed above, an effective internet-marketing strategy brings branding and promotion together. Their relationship should also be reflected in performance measurement. For example, you cannot rely only on the statistics from one successful paid social advertisingor assess only the offers and creative assets themselves.

We recommend collecting data throughout promotion and using end-to-end analytics. This helps allocate future budgets intelligently instead of investing in ineffective online-marketing activities.

Customers have many options, and their choices are often influenced by emotions.

Emotions matter in sales, and branding plays a major role in shaping them. But buyers also follow a journey before making a decision, so branding needs promotion; together, they strengthen each other. On average, a customer needs seven interactions before making a purchase. More expensive products usually require more contact with the brand.

In closing: a story about DNA

In 1962, Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA.

Like the linked strands of DNA, branding and performance marketing work together. In our view, their connection is key to effective promotion. We are not claiming a groundbreaking discovery; we simply want to draw attention to this synergy.

In practice, when a company’s marketing strategy treats branding and performance separately, effectiveness declines. The boundary between the two is also becoming less distinct. Campaigns that inform and engage consumers are being integrated with campaigns that stimulate sales. The latter use data from the former, while awareness campaigns are refined using sales data.

Integrated internet marketing is becoming more common. Programmatic platforms have emerged for TV advertising, and digital radio is growing. Outdoor advertising is beginning to use trigger data and facial-recognition technology. The article also anticipated that mobile devices might soon let advertisers target billboard messages to specific audiences. Marketing is changing: integrated strategies are replacing older digital plans, helping advertisers track the customer journey and assess how campaigns affect sales.

Our experience has shown us that branding and performance work poorly in isolation. If you want a strong, in-demand brand, develop its positioning and promote it through a wider range of communication channels. When promoting an existing brand, remember that entering the media market may call for updates to its visual presentation and tone of voice.

And always keep the marketing strategy in view: it is the foundation for safe, high-quality promotion.