TL;DR: Brandformance is a marketing growth strategy that places the brand at the center of scaling —developing an optimization methodology that measures each marketing channel against performance metrics with defining KPIs that increase your brand awareness.

While brand awareness is defined as the extent to which customers can recall or recognize a brand under different conditions, performance marketing is a very pragmatic approach that measures the effectiveness of each digital media channel. Brandformance is a methodology that optimizes brand awareness efforts for the most effective channels.

Brandformance, Brand Awareness Reciprocity with Performance

Different methods, such as recall surveys, brand search volume, and website traffic, have been developed to measure the effectiveness of brand awareness. However, when a company decides to assess its impact, KPIs are often unclear, leading to a lack of actionable steps. This is why brand awareness is frequently considered vague, and efforts to measure it often remain behind.

On the flip side, the direct results offered by performance marketing have resulted in an increased share of marketing budgets.  The challenge starts when the converting audience reaches the limit. This limit is reflected by the product solution search volume cap or the size of the social media converting audience. Digital marketers try to overcome this by expanding the target audience with less intent ones and broadening their keyword research. Most times, it’s not enough to achieve the expected growth.

The Brandformance methodology brings those various elements together to reveal how each target channel attributes the business’s new prospects. An important aspect to consider is the methodology’s flexibility, allowing each organization to tailor it to its specific needs. Start with baby steps; there’s no need to launch a major restructuring project right away. Once you have a clear understanding of the methodology, you can scale.

How does Brandformance deliver growth?

These days, as growth is the main focus for many companies, marketers employ various tactics to expand the pipeline. These tactics may involve generating leads (MQL for B2B) or driving higher traffic to eCommerce platforms. Recognizing that the quality may not be optimal, this strategy relies on the principle of the law of large numbers, assuming that a greater volume will ultimately conclude successfully.

If we’re being honest, this approach has many disadvantages and creates a lot of conflicts. That’s why quality traffic should be your main concern.
Any marketer would agree that the highest relevant traffic comes from people searching for the brand. Similarly, any salesperson will request more leads of this quality.
We used to think we had little control over our brand search volume. Brandformance came to revise this idea using KPIs to increase the audience prospects coming from the brand (search or direct traffic). Setting it as a compass, the traffic coming to your site is much more engaged, and the quality of leads is better, increasing the chance of conversion to sales.

Which companies should apply the Brandformance strategy?

As a concept, Brandformance suits any company that is looking to scale and is open to the idea that sustainable marketing focuses on growing your brand. You don’t have to wait until all conventional advertising methods have been exhausted.

If we robustly categorize companies by the 4-model product lifecycle – Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline – the growth phase is usually the right time to develop a Brandformance strategy. That’s when the product is relatively new but becomes more popular. Leveraging it in that time will drive even more attention to the product, and the scale will be more quality-oriented.

Nevertheless, startups at their beginning (Introduction phase) and established companies (Maturity phase) should also consider developing a brandformance strategy.

In the introduction phase, companies seek to sense the market and find their product-market fit by asking different questions. What problems do potential customers have? Does my product solve them? Is my product mature enough? And so on. By using the brandformance methodology, companies can obtain answers to these questions, gain a better sense of direction, find what values and messages drive more prospects to search their brand/category, and establish their brand market position faster.

In the maturity phase, product sales level off or even start to decline. This poses a challenge as the primary goal is to increase sales. When product and marketing managers struggle to maintain growth, they often resort to brainstorming sessions, price adjustments, and other desperate measures to alter their approach and remedy the situation.

So how can you start and develop it?

The global situation fluctuates, marketing approaches change and methods that succeed for one company may not be effective for another. Despite this, companies are excelling in the application of the Brandformance strategy.

‘Thebrandformer’ theme is to develop the Brandformance subject into a practical framework that any business can tailor to its needs. Please subscribe to our newsletter to keep up-to-date with our updates; we assure you that we won’t be intrusive.

One last thing: We’re open to new ideas and ways to develop our framework and methods. If you want to be part of Thebrandformer, don’t hesitate to contact us.