Brand building or performance marketing? How to split your budget
Performance marketing is easy to love, because every click is measured. Brand building is harder to defend, because its effect arrives slowly. Companies that fund only one of them usually pay for it later, either in rising acquisition costs or in awareness that never turns into sales.
What each one does
Performance activity targets people who are already in the market: search ads, retargeting, promotions. It captures demand. Brand activity reaches people who are not buying yet, so that when they are ready, your name comes to mind first. It creates demand.
The research behind the split
The best-known reference is the work of Les Binet and Peter Field for the IPA, based on a large databank of advertising effectiveness cases. Their analysis suggested that for many consumer brands, around 60 per cent of the budget on brand building and 40 per cent on sales activation produced the strongest long-term results. Treat it as a starting point, not a law. The right balance depends on your category, price point and how established you are.
- New brands often need more activation early on to prove that the model works
- B2B companies with long sales cycles usually need a larger brand share than they expect
- Categories with frequent purchases reward a consistent brand presence
- Online stores with high repeat rates can move budget into retention and email
Measure brand without guessing
Brand effects can be tracked, just not by last-click attribution. Combine a few simple signals:
- Branded search volume over time
- Direct and returning traffic
- Share of voice compared with competitors
- Short awareness and consideration surveys every quarter
- The trend of cost per acquisition in performance channels
A practical way to start
- Keep the performance campaigns that are clearly profitable running
- Set aside a fixed share of the budget for brand activity and protect it for at least two quarters
- Use one creative idea across both, so brand ads make performance ads more recognisable
- Review branded search and acquisition costs monthly, and adjust the split twice a year
Performance marketing harvests. Brand building plants. You need both to have a crop next year.
Keep reading
A content calendar a small team can actually keep
Most content calendars collapse by week three. This lightweight system helps small teams post consistently without burning out.
Brand guidelines your team will actually use
Most brand books end up forgotten in a shared folder. Here is how to make guidelines people open every week, not once.
One idea, every format: how to build a campaign that travels
Campaigns fall apart when each format gets its own idea. Here is how to build one concept that works on a billboard, in a feed and in a store.
