Digital marketing has evolved rapidly in recent years, and one of the most prominent trends is the combination of branding and metrics (performance) in a single marketing strategy: brand performance. To apply this marketing strategy model to your business, you first need to know what brandformance is, and in this article, we will explain in detail what it is.
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What is Brandformance?
Brandformance is a marketing trend that mixes branding and performance. The main objective is to strengthen a brand while achieving business metrics. How? By creating campaigns that reach your audience and transmit brand values to position the brand, measuring business KPIs, understanding the return on investment, and improving positions in search engines like Google.
In short, it is a strategy that seeks to improve brand image while simultaneously obtaining measurable results in terms of performance. This technique combines the best of branding and the best of paid advertising.
To better understand the concept, it is important to differentiate between branding and performance.
- Branding focuses on creating and maintaining a positive and recognizable brand image in the consumer’s mind.
- On the other hand, performance is the term we use in digital marketing for any campaign in which you invest and pay only for the results obtained and measurable.
Although they have their disadvantages, brand performance is not the sum of them, but rather the synergy between the two strategies, giving as a result: the more branding, the better performance.
Here you can see Cristina Luca de Tena, CEO of Getlinko, explain briefly and simply what brandformance is.
If that’s not enough, you can watch an interview with Cristina Luca de Tena, where she goes deeper into the concept of brandformance.
What are the advantages of including it in your strategy?
- Measuring results: As mentioned above, compared to traditional branding actions, you can measure results and return on investment. For example, the incorporation of UTMs in a blog post where you talk about your brand allows you to track the traffic obtained from each action, leads, and even conversions.
- Media impact and increased brand authority: We have digital media talking about you; it helps to create brand awareness and convey the values of the same in a lasting way, collaborating with your digital reputation. In addition, you will be able to make yourself known to your target audience through Branded Content pieces that add value.
- Non-intrusive advertising: We live in a world saturated with advertising, where brands fight to capture the attention of the public, and consumers or potential customers increasingly avoid intrusive advertising. An example is the use of Adblocks. The solution is in Branded content, where you bring value to your audience, achieving an organic and more effective engagement than traditional advertising.
- Using the power of the Creator Economy: Today, we are all content creators thanks to social networks and the power of the Internet. Currently some referents create quality content in almost every market niche and have large audiences. Brandformance uses the power of content creators (such as Blogs, Digital Newspapers, Podcasters, Youtubers, etc) to reach your target audience with your brand in an organic way.
- Evergreen: The use of branded content in some digital media, such as YouTube, Blogs, or podcasts, can allow it to be available at all times to a user, and the investment continues to bring results over time. For example, a podcast post where you talk about your brand can be heard by the audience not only on the day of its launch, but new users can discover the content for months or years, and you will continue to receive measurable results from there.
- Improved SEO positioning of your brand: Publishing articles in digital media allows you to add follow links to your website and gain authority through Link Juice. These links you receive from related media on the subject of your business give clear signals to Google that your website has authority and improves your page rank, allowing you to climb positions in search results.
What should you avoid in a brand performance strategy?
When starting a Brandformance strategy, it is important to take into account certain mistakes you should avoid, and here is a list of situations to avoid.
- Not generating trust: The most profitable investment is one where you generate trust and business. As Leo Burnett said: “In today’s advertising noise, unless you get noticed and believed, you have nothing”. If you get noticed (performance) but without credibility (brand), your budget falls on deaf ears.
Ignoring data analysis: For an effective brand performance strategy, it is essential to have accurate and detailed data to measure the success. The performance part is a fundamental element of marketing, and it has been the fundamental pillar on which the strategies of the marketing teams of companies revolve for decades. - Not focusing on a target audience: It is essential to know your audience to create content that attracts and connects with them. Not having a clear understanding of the target audience can lead to an ineffective brand performance strategy and content that doesn’t resonate with the target audience. There is no productivity if you want to advertise in a large media outlet that generates content not connected to what you offer. You have to pursue quality over quantity.
- Focus on the short term: This type of strategy should have a long-term focus and seek to build a lasting brand image in the consumer’s mind. Focusing solely on short-term objectives can result in missed opportunities to cultivate a lasting brand image. If you intend to invest, it is better to distribute the investment over time rather than betting on a large initial investment, with a minimum investment period of no less than 6 months.
- Not maintaining brand consistency: It is important to maintain brand consistency in all digital marketing tactics to build a solid and coherent brand image. Therefore, you must focus on having a presence in places related to your brand and look for content and media where the audience is in line with what you have to offer. It is also essential to have a long-term project to ensure this branding work is ingrained in consumers’ perception of your brand.
- Copying the competition: The content you create throughout the campaign must be original since any plagiarism will harm the perception that audiences have of your brand and content, as well as your positioning in search engines.
What else do you need to know about brand performance?
The Getlinko platform has been working and guiding its clients for a long time on how to develop this strategy effectively; for this purpose, the platform offers content in networks and blogs where complements to this strategy are published, and its use is deepened.
As Cristina Luca de Tena says, “Smaller companies or companies that are just starting, such as startups and SMEs, decide their marketing strategies based on the most immediate and quantifiable return possible,” this awakens a feeling of insecurity and the need for immediate results, leaving aside or not even having brandformance among their options.
You must understand that brandformance is a strategy that requires time, patience, and trust if things are well done. It is a mistake to establish all your activities in search of immediate results and short-term projects; this does not guarantee the continuity of your projects over time nor its establishment in the market and the perception of consumers as a brand.
We recommend you to visit the radio interview with Cristina Luca de Tena, CEO of Getlinko, in which she explains in more detail and depth what Brandformance is, how you can take advantage of Getlinko to use this strategy, and other details contrasted with examples; visit the interview here.
