Why Your Marketing Strategy Needs Brand, Demand, and Performance Ads
Brand preference is more than a feel-good metric. According to the Marketing Accountability Standards Board, brand preference explains nearly 90% of the variation in brands’ market share. In short: when people like your brand more, they buy more from you. Your marketing strategy needs Brand, Demand, and Performance Ads.
Strong brands command higher prices, inspire loyalty, and earn trust. For example, Apple users pay top dollar and stick with the brand. And emotional connection pays off: customers who feel emotionally connected have 3x higher lifetime value and are more likely to refer others.
Trust matters. A 2025 study found that 87% of consumers are willing to pay more for brands they trust.
Why Brand Marketing Matters
Performance ads are great for short-term gains, but long-term growth comes from brand marketing. Les Binet and Peter Field found the most effective strategies balance long-term brand building and short-term sales (often around 60/40).
Take Adidas. For a while, it spent 77% of its budget on digital performance ads. Sales looked good – until they didn’t. Once Adidas used econometric modeling, they found that 65% of their sales were driven by brand activity. That insight led them to rebalance their budget toward brand campaigns.
Neglecting brand-building results in diminishing returns. Gap Inc., Tripadvisor, and others admitted they needed to invest in brand again to sustain sales.
A 1-point gain in awareness or consideration can mean a 1% lift in sales, according to Nielsen. And stronger brand metrics also improve your performance ad efficiency.
What Are Brand, Demand, and Performance Ads?
Brand Marketing: Builds awareness and emotional connection. It’s your story and values, told consistently across channels. Think brand videos, slogans, storytelling campaigns.
Demand Generation: Captures interest and educates your audience. It sits in the middle of the funnel: webinars, helpful guides, and content offers.
Performance Marketing: Focuses on conversions now. Think paid search, social ads, email marketing. Measurable, trackable, and highly optimized.
Why You Need All Three: Brand, Demand, Performance Ads
Most brands over-invest in performance because it feels measurable. But without brand marketing, your funnel dries up. And without demand generation, performance ads lack context.
Retail: Adidas Relearns the Value of Brand
We’ve mentioned Adidas before, but it’s worth revisiting as a lesson in misalignment. Adidas discovered that 65% of its sales were driven by brand marketing—broad campaigns, visibility, and creative storytelling. However, they were spending the majority of their budget on highly targeted digital ads. This led to a misattribution issue: performance ads looked effective on dashboards, but they were riding on the brand equity built by earlier campaigns. Once Adidas rebalanced their media mix—investing more in brand-building alongside performance—they saw better overall efficiency.
Gap Inc. had a similar realization, shifting back to brand after seeing diminishing returns from short-term tactics. For retail, familiarity creates a halo effect—your stores and ads perform better when your brand is already top-of-mind.
Retail giants like Nike continue to run emotional brand campaigns not for vanity, but because they make every product drop and retail channel more effective.
E-Commerce: DTC Brands Find Balance
Take Bombas, the sock company known from Shark Tank. They scaled quickly using performance marketing and a purpose-driven model (“buy one, give one”). But they didn’t stop there. Bombas expanded into multichannel marketing, adding TV and outdoor to their mix. That broader reach helped them keep growing, ultimately generating over $1.4 billion in retail sales. On the other hand, many DTC brands that relied only on social ads hit a growth ceiling.
Warby Parker avoided this trap by adding physical stores and investing in PR and partnerships to reach new audiences. They understood that performance marketing alone won’t keep the funnel full forever. Brand marketing brings in new demand, and then performance tactics convert it. As experts have noted, customer retention matters—but constant acquisition is essential. An integrated approach ensures you’re both creating interest and capturing demand.
Recruiting & Higher Education: Brand Reputation Attracts People
Brand building isn’t just for products—it matters in recruiting and education, too. Employer branding is now central to talent acquisition. A Universum study found that companies with strong brand reputations have up to 28% lower turnover. Job seekers are more likely to respond to recruiters if they trust and recognize the brand.
In higher ed, schools are realizing that a compelling brand story improves enrollment, reputation, and fundraising. Branding creates the emotional appeal that gets students to choose one school over another. Think of how “Harvard” or “Stanford” carry weight—their brand equity does much of the marketing for them. Most schools won’t reach that level, but strategic branding can still make a massive impact.
Arizona State University (ASU) is a strong example. Rather than marketing every program under a single name, ASU established clearly branded sub-schools—like the W. P. Carey School of Business, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, and Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. This structure gives each area its own identity, prestige, and positioning—while still benefiting from the strength of the ASU brand. It allows prospective students to connect with a specific discipline while still trusting the parent university’s reputation.
The same thinking applies to companies hiring in competitive markets—brand reputation improves the performance of your recruiting ads and helps attract better-fit candidates. When people believe in what your brand stands for, they’re more likely to apply, commit, and stay.
Why Brand, Demand, Performance Integration Wins
Research shows that multiple touchpoints and balanced strategies drive better results. Yet 70% of companies experience friction between brand and demand teams. Half of marketers want to integrate these strategies but don’t know where to start.
The best-performing companies don’t pick one. They invest in all three.
What Brand, Demand, and Peformance Strategy Means for Your Marketing Team
Here’s the reality: most internal teams are stretched thin. You might have a great creative lead but no one focused on demand gen, or a PPC pro without a brand strategist.
That’s where a full-service marketing agency can help. Agencies with brand, demand, and performance capabilities can:
– Create a unified strategy
– Align messaging across the funnel
– Execute faster with expert teams
– Hiring an agency gives your team more firepower without adding headcount.
Final Brand, Demand Performance Strategy Takeaways
Brand preference is tied to revenue.
Performance ads alone can’t sustain growth.
An integrated marketing strategy outperforms siloed tactics.
Agencies can help you align brand, demand, and performance.
If your marketing results have stalled, or if you’re looking to grow market share, it may be time to bring in a partner to build the full funnel strategy you need.
Need help aligning your brand, demand, and performance strategy?