And the chance to get in front of millions of engaged individuals really is rare. But it also creates a conundrum—one that marketers have debated for years. Should you build a brand marketing campaign or a performance marketing campaign? Do you try to get your brand in front of new audiences? Or do you try to inspire conversions and purchases while people are living in the moment? Can you do both? Let’s talk about it. 

Brand Marketing Defines What’s Possible for Your Company

Brand marketing is what most people think of when they discuss ads shown during major events. These campaigns aim to broaden awareness for a company, its strengths, its values, and the overall tone of the company. These are the clydesdale horses or Betty White eating a candy bar. 

Brand marketing campaigns are essential for growing your audience of potential customers, reaffirming your existing customers’ allegiance to your brand, and ensuring you stand out against competitors. They aren’t known for driving revenue. At least not directly. 

But without brand marketing campaigns, you don’t have the audience necessary to execute performance marketing campaigns. You don’t know how to refine your messaging to reflect exactly why people love you. And, ultimately, you can’t grow. 

Performance Marketing Drives Real Business Results

Performance marketing uses the audiences built by brand marketing and turns them into customers. Performance marketers focus on real business results, such as Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), store visits, incremental sales or check growth, and other metrics tied to measurable outcomes. In short, performance marketing focuses on action and revenue—the results of all your efforts. While these kinds of ads don’t typically have a memorable catchphrase, they turn passive fans into repeat customers. 

A major mistake companies make while planning for big events is focusing only on brand marketing campaigns. They get all the attention, but don’t have a plan for what to do with all the new eyeballs. Recently, Solo Stove rolled out a brilliant partnership with Snoop Dogg, but failed to convert into new sales because their performance marketing campaigns didn’t have the same attention. 

You can avoid overspending and ensure real business results with a combination of brand marketing and performance marketing campaigns, especially during shared events. But you need to make a plan now. 

Brand Marketing vs. Performance Marketing? Who’s the Winner?

In truth, both brand marketing and performance marketing are important, but neither of them will work without each other. Companies need both to ensure their marketing efforts result in real business results. But how should they work together? Let’s talk about it. 

Plan Your Brand and Performance Marketing Strategies

To deliver the real business results you need, here are the steps you need to take before launching your major event advertising campaigns. 

1. Know why customers love you: Brand marketing campaigns that work don’t try to reinvent the wheel. They take what works for their most loyal customers and find a clever way to get new people to care. Is your thing humor? Lean into it. Is your brand known for bold choices? Don’t shy away from that. Authenticity and clarity make a successful brand ad. 
2. Pick one goal and stick with it: Performance marketing fails when it tries to do too much at once. Pick one or two conversions you want new audiences to complete and funnel all new traffic there. Choose something realistic that delivers value right away. A focused campaign is a successful campaign. 
3. Keep building from what you learn: With new customers, key metrics like ROAS and cost per acquisition, will start to shift. These metrics show you where to iterate and where to expand your strategies. Keep an eye on these important business results so that you can scale and repeat your success. 

GroundTruth Delivers Real Business Results for All Your Advertising Campaigns

GroundTruth has a proven track record of driving real business results for all types of businesses, like PepsiCo’s Yachak Mate Organic Energy Tea which saw a 583% boost in incremental visits to stores carrying their products after one of their campaigns. Want to learn more about what’s possible for your brand and performance marketing campaigns? We have answers! Schedule a call and we’ll show you how you can turn your marketing campaigns into real business results with GroundTruth.

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So, when should you track ROAS of each marketing channel and when should you focus on single campaigns? 

As you might have guessed, the answer is a little more nuanced based on your goals and the problems your company is trying to solve. But, just because the answer isn’t quick doesn’t mean we don’t have the right one for you. Here’s what we’ve seen work best for marketing teams from across industries. 

The Case for Tracking ROAS by Channel

Omnichannel advertising campaigns are the standard for brands at this point. Capturing consumer attention not only takes creativity, but it also takes persistence, timing, and thoughtful targeting. We don’t have to tell you how budgets can get out of hand with so many factors affecting the success of a single ad. 

Companies who want to understand how effective their spending is should track ROAS by channel. This doesn’t mean that you should automatically cut channels that aren’t delivering a high ROAS. Some marketing channels will show low ROAS, but their overall influence is essential. For example, a mobile ad may not earn as many conversions without the CTV ad that explained your company’s special deal. In that case, spending more on CTV awareness ads might result in more conversions on your mobile ads. 

When you want to understand where to spend your budget and optimize for real business results, track ROAS by channel. Remember that each channel informs the other, so give yourself room to test various budget splits to get the best results. 

The Case for Tracking ROAS by Campaign

Some teams are more concerned with messaging. Perhaps you’re in the middle of a rebrand or want to refine your value proposition to reach new customers. If those are the most important goals for your marketing team, tracking ROAS by campaign is a much better strategy for you.  

Whether we’re talking to customers or fellow marketers, the most common problem we hear is how to cut through the noise. We all see thousands of messages a day, it’s increasingly difficult to know what feature of your product or service resonates most with audiences. Tracking ROAS by each campaign will give you a quick snapshot of which messages are working with whom. From there, you can refine the creative, reevaluate the audiences, or move forward with your winning strategy. It won’t be the only answer you need, but it will give you a good idea and allow you to pivot quickly. 

Get Real Business Results with GroundTruth

In truth, there are a million ways to ensure your ROAS performance marketing efforts succeed. Tracking marketing ROAS by channel and by campaign are two important ways. But, most importantly, your teams need a partner that is focused on the same real business results they are. GroundTruth is that partner. Want to know more? Contact us today!

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