Again, a) I spoke about this at length above b) I am sure you will find me a case where I am wrong – that’s not my point.
On top of that, performance generally tends to be siloed – an obvious inefficiency. Link builders do link building, PPC does paid, etc. – there’s a general lack of broader strategy and comms when performance takes the lead.
Each team has its own KPIs and does whatever it takes to meet them, resulting in obvious inefficiency.
Performance Will Pigeon-hole You Every Time
Because performance marketing is very here-and-now, it generally lacks the flexibility to build for the future.
Doing what’s best for the KPIs is too often doing what’s best in the immediate only.
That means a lack of flexibility in both structure and activity.
I’ll give you a great example of what I mean when I say performance limits a business structurally.
While this case may sound “far-fetched” today, SEOs who have been around a while will search their feelings for they know what I am about to say to be true.
Back in the day, if I had a site that sold DVDs, “the SEO play” would be to name the site “buydvds.com,” or whatever.
It’s generally not a good idea to name your brand after a specific tech asset as, well, tech assets change. In this case, DVDs are basically defunct.
Now the business here may have pivoted to streaming media but now has to deal with a whole rebrand (including a site migration) and all of the immense headaches that come with it. What they should have done at the onset was name the site something like “entertainmentmedia.com” or whatever.
Why didn’t they? Because the performance play became primary, and the brand play was discarded.
Performance, by its very nature, lacks breadth and as a result, will often limit the scope of how the business is able to function or structure itself.
The other way performance limits a business relates directly to the marketing activities performance signs off on and doesn’t sign off on.
Now, if you think I’ve been a bit salty thus far…hold my beer.
What performance-based marketing does to overall marketing activities is the equivalent of a marathon runner deciding to amputate their foot mid-race while maintaining the expectation to break a world record.
To see this in action, look no further than what happens when performance owns a content strategy.
What is the value of content in the context of performance? Impressions, clicks, traffic, conversions, etc.
You see this all the time in the SEO space. You can’t go a week without seeing someone somewhere ask, “If a keyword has 0 search volume should I bother writing content for it?”
Every time I see this question, a piece of me dies.
Not because it might not be true. There might not be a ton of search volume but because that’s a not reason not to write a piece of content.
Leave aside the fact that your current users may expect that content to be there on your site, it could signal the same expectation to new consumers hitting the site for the first time. Also, content is a corpus. You have to build it up to the point where you can write that post for that money keyword.
Performance marketing never asks, “What does writing this content allow me to do next?”
Instead, it’s always, “Why does this content do for me right now?”
Pigeon-holed.
Folks Might Use You, But They Also Might Hate You (And Is That What You Really Aim To Do?)
My sister recently told me how she’s so reliant on Amazon but hates using them at the same time due to how they allegedly treat their workers.
It’s entirely possible that folks may consume your offering but will not be fond of you when doing so. It’s also almost certain that your brand can’t get away with it the way Amazon can.
If all you’re thinking about is traffic KPIs and conversions, etc., you’re missing the most fundamental aspect of success – likability.
It doesn’t even have to be so extreme. Look at the oversaturation of content between Marvel and Star Wars (and even my personal favorite, HBO’s Hard Knocks NFL documentary series).
Sure, they get viewers, but it all comes with negative sentiment. While the end product of Hard Knock’s new preseason series was actually not bad, New York sports radio (the series featured a New York team) trounced HBO before its release.
For a week, every sports host was basically shaking their heads at the idea of having to watch a whole series about phone calls between General Managers making trades, etc. So HBO got the numbers but accumulated a lot of brand baggage to do it.
How smart is that as a long-term strategy?
That’s, fundamentally, a testimony to the fact that brand can assess a move qualitatively while performance just can’t.
That’s not to say performance’s quantitative measurement isn’t vital. It’s a very important part of this brand balancing act.
If Brand Builds, Then Performance Course Corrects
I don’t want you to walk away thinking that performance marketing doesn’t hold value. This article isn’t about brand being better. It’s about the balance.
Brand needs performance to leverage its full power, just like performance needs brand. Again, brand can set you up, but performance closes the deal. Brand, for example, can set up a business to have the authority it needs to pull in organic traffic.
But you need a genuine SEO strategy that includes things like keyword targeting, etc. In this specific case, a performance-based mindset is what will take the brand from potentiality to actuality.
Very often, brand course corrections should be based on the data performance marketing provides.
If there’s a drop in whatever KPI whether it be sign-ups or traffic or whatever, it’s often a change in brand and business strategy that’s needed. That change can’t occur unless you have the data insights performance marketing provides.
Take Starbucks. At the time of this writing, they’ve seen a decline in business, and there are multiple reasons for it. What I found interesting was the user sentiment towards Starbucks’ “corporate identity.”
In an interview with CBS, one customer said, “Starbucks started really feeling like corporate America in a way it hadn’t before.”
If I were Starbucks, I would at least explore the idea of creating a sub brand that is more niche and local. Much the way the beer companies did when they saw craft beer sales surge (hence Coors created Blue Moon).
That sort of shift in brand strategy can’t possibly occur without the insights offered by performance marketing. You have to have sound performance marketing processes in place to effectively run your brand marketing.
So when I say brand is “primary,” I mean that in the sense of the stages of marketing thought and activity.
Not necessarily importance (I do think brand is fundamentally more important, but that’s, again, not what this post is about). You literally have to balance (maybe integrate is a better word) performance into your brand marketing in order to be effective.
Can’t Performance Build Up The Brand?
Doing this is like trying to pull a whale through a needle hole.
Yeah, I guess it might be technically possible, and someone out there did it – but it is not the norm. Upon considering this, I am sure no one has pulled a whale through a needle hole, but I think you get my point.
You are trying to build up a tidal wave one raindrop at a time. Yes, it is possible, but it goes against the very foundation of what you’re trying to actually do – gain momentum.
I’ve heard the argument that by ranking for this and that query and everything in between, you will become an established presence – a brand.
That can be possible. And yes, your content strategy (SEO and beyond) is a big part of your brand strategy. But thinking about something like Google Search as being the method to establish a brand reputation is a chaotic way to go about building a brand.
To start, Search isn’t a medium where your audience may even be interested in “hearing from you.” They may have a specific need at a specific moment that brings them to search. Once that need is met does the user really care to explore more about your product or service? It’s a toss-up at best.
It’s like trying to have a conversation with someone in the middle of a lecture – it’s just not conducive.
You want to have a conversation and make a connection in a place and time that is meant to have a conversation and connection (social media, YouTube, live events, etc.).
Using something like Search to establish a distinctly recognizable brand is just not what Search is.
SEO and search engines are a great way to supplement and reinforce the messaging and positioning you establish on more suitable platforms.
If a consumer sees you on social and interacts with you over time and then goes to search and keeps seeing your results pop up it can reinforce your positioning. It may even make it likely to get a conversation out of it.
What makes performance hard in terms of it being the method to establish a brand is that the assets usually associated with it (PPC, SEO, etc.) are secondary branding assets in the context of how users discover them.
They can supplement, accent, and reinforce, but they are not designed to be primarily effective at establishing a brand identity and audience connection.
Think of it like the difference between someone specifically coming to your blog after interacting with your brand for years on social versus someone who finds a single post on Google.
Yes, they both might read the same content but in the latter case, there is no identity contextualization. They don’t know who you are and how that post fits in with your overall identity and positioning. They get the information in the post but in terms of getting “you,” it’s not very direct.
The way the audience interacts with your brand via performance marketing activity is far too limited and narrow in scope for identity contextualization to easily take place.
So it can happen, and it does happen a bit each time that person interacts with your content (say via search), but it’s piecemeal and disjointed.
Better Balance Means Better Marketing
Balancing brand and performance means knowing the role and place of each marketing discipline. It means allowing the two areas to interact and influence each other at the right time and in the right way.
While it all starts with branding at the onset, the relationship between the two areas of marketing should grow to be reciprocal. Brand should open the doors for performance and performance should help the brand evolve.
For too long, the digital marketing space has siloed these two areas, with inefficiency (and more) being the net result.
The future of marketing is being able to unite these two concepts effectively. I think there is a lack of attention given to how brand impacts performance efficacy (and vice versa).
Uniting the two areas of marketing will better align with where the web and its user base are headed.
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