Imagine this scenario — you're scrolling through Instagram and come across Wim Hof's account.

His charisma is magnetic, his enthusiasm infectious.

You're inspired, excited, ready to dive into his world of breathwork and resilience-building. But then you click through to his website, eager to sign up for a course, and... crickets.

The sales page is dry, soulless, lacking any of the personality that drew you in. The confusion hits you like the initial shock of an ice bath, but without any of the feel-good benefits. 

This disconnect isn't just disappointing — it's a perfect example of the all-too-common divide between brand marketing and performance marketing.

We're drawn in by Wim's magnetic energy, but the soulless sales page puts us off.

Jay Sennet even commented on this disconnect on LinkedIn, highlighting the stark contrast between Wim's social media presence and his website copy.

It's time to bridge the gap between brand marketing and performance marketing, creating a seamless experience that both inspires and converts.

Right, let’s get to it… 

The Brand versus Performance Divide

Common misconceptions

First, to clarify, I’m considering brand marketing as any marketing that focuses on the development of the identity of the brand. This can include things like tone of voice, brand values, brand design and a large share of the social media content we see, day-to-day. It’s all about who the brand is and how it communicates to its customers. 

On the other hand, performance marketing is all about getting measurable results. It’s ad campaigns, SEO and conversion strategies. It’s all about how to get as many customers as possible to buy/book/sign up for the thing you do, and focuses on maintaining the growth of your company’s bottom line. 

There's a widespread belief that brand marketing and performance marketing are inherently at odds. 

Brand marketing is seen as the realm of creativity, emotion, and long-term vision. Performance marketing, on the other hand, is often viewed as cold, data-driven, and focused solely on short-term results.

“The distinction [between brand and performance marketing] is often driven by the way in which companies set up their budgets… which has turned out to be profoundly unhelpful but very sticky.” >> Cait Lamberton, author and Professor of Marketing at Philadelphia University (credit: from a convo we had in LinkedIn DMs)

In practice, I get it — some people are solely passionate about working creatively, and developing brand personality, whereas others are all about SEO and media buying. But if those two sides don’t actually acknowledge the other (and that their counterpart/neighbouring department also wants to add value to how each project is created and delivered) then neither is going to function well.

This binary thinking is not only outdated — it's actively harmful to your marketing efforts.

If you're only looking for the epic wow-factor aesthetic then it makes sense to invest in the landscape-sweeping drone videos and sun-soaked destination shoots. You want to walk your future customers through your brand's story, your ethos, your vision. You want them to feel the same passion about it that you do.

But emotion-eliciting interactions with online shoppers don't always have a tangible ROI. They might look fantastic, but are lacking in the trackable metrics your CFO wants from you to prove your big-scale campaigns are worth the cash. ‘Til now, you've been measuring the success of your campaigns by the quality of office-based vibes and number of co-worker high-5s. But sadly, that's not a number you can take to your budget-approver.

Different Goals,
Same Team

We covered the differences between brand marketing and performance marketing briefly earlier. But it’s important to have a more in-depth understanding to have any chance of getting both to work cohesively together for your business (or your clients’ businesses). 

Let's break it down.

Brand Marketing:

• Goal: To align with the aspirations of the brand’s audience. To reinforce the brand's identity or give new power to their identity. To inspire, excite and show empathy. To reassure customers that their loyalty is worthwhile.

• Metrics: Often harder to measure. Some teams rely on "vibes and high-fives"*. Some metrics may be measurable, such as increased social following, but this doesn’t mean much for your brand's bottom line unless it also directly results in increased conversions.

*Once, while on a pro marketing panel, I asked the CMO of a very high-end travel brand how he knew whether a brand campaign was successful or not, to which he replied "vibes and high-fives". True story.

Performance Marketing:

• Goal: To get more clicks, revenue, and ROI.

• Metrics: Easily trackable — conversions, sales, etc.

The problem? When these teams work in silos, the customer experience becomes disjointed. 

We've all seen brands implode when they go hard on the performance marketing side of things but don’t put the effort into brand marketing. Everything they put out either feels gimmicky, icky and lacking in narrative. So you know there's no loyalty or longevity there. Their customers are only buying from them through price and convenience.

Similarly, we’ve watched brands with a great aesthetic and personality build up a following of loyal groupies, only to die a slow death as they fizzle out when their lack of sales finally drains the company bank account dry. 

It's a precarious see-saw between being too sales-y and conversion-focussed versus storytelling with harder-to-gather results.

The Cost of being Inconsistent

When there's a disconnect between your brand-led top-of-funnel (ToFu) messaging and your performance-led bottom-of-funnel (BoFu) content, you're setting yourself up for failure.

Here's what happens:

1. Trust erosion and customer confusion

2. Reduced motivation to buy/engage

3. Reliance on discounts to drive sales (devaluing your product)

You want to connect the right people at the right time with the right message, BUT if there is discord between ToFu, and BoFu communications then you've got a problem. 

“Cognitive dissonance occurs when individuals perceive an inconsistency between their actions and beliefs.” >> Harmon-Jones, E., & Mills, J. “An Introduction to Cognitive Dissonance Theory and an Overview of Current Perspectives on the Theory.”, p.6.

>>  For brands, inconsistent messaging can create cognitive dissonance among customers, leading to mistrust and disengagement. Ensuring consistency helps align customer expectations with brand actions. Avoiding cognitive dissonance through consistent messaging is essential for maintaining trust. Brands must ensure their communications are in harmony with their core values and actions to prevent customer mistrust.

If your potential customers experience cognitive dissonance because of the rift between your brand and performance marketing, they will go from being excited about your company to confusion born from inconsistency when suddenly it seems a different brand is in front of them. Trust is lost and scepticism grows. This is potentially disastrous for your business.

Just look at the contrast between Wim Hof’s: inspirational content on social media, versus his dry, dry sales page...

When you only focus on brand marketing, Sally Braid (one of my mentors, who has worked with the likes of Vans and HappySocks) believe that:

’You’re spending all this money on brand campaigns. When it’s over, you’ll move onto the next campaign, but you need to connect the performance marketing piece to make that spend worthwhile.”  

Making this connection solves the century-old Wanamaker problem, named after the department store retailer who’s credited with saying about advertising, “Half the money I spend is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” (source)

Integrating performance marketing into brand campaigns enables companies to run highly targeted marketing campaigns that deliver measurable ROI. Without this, if brands don’t activate the meaning/values enough in their copy, there’s no longevity to their efforts. 

Too many businesses are still operating like this today, and it simply isn’t necessary or sustainable. 

Speaking to Both Sides of the Brain

Here's the thing: your customers don't suddenly become emotionless robots when they reach your sales page. They're still the same people who were inspired by your brand content.

Research backs this up: 

"The emerging field of neuroeconomics tells us that such emotions account for more than 90% of consumer decision-making." (source)

"Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows that when evaluating brands, consumers primarily use emotions (personal feelings and experiences), rather than information (brand attributes, features, and facts)." (source)

While ToFu and BoFu content is inherently different in terms of internal strategy, the journey for the customer must be seamless. Both performance and brand marketing need to be collaborative if they are going to win not just the hearts of new customers, but their trust to complete the conversion process too. 

“Behavioral integrity is the perceived alignment between a leader's words and actions, and it is an important predictor of trust and credibility.” (source)

>> For brands, this means that their messaging across all platforms must be consistent. Any misalignment can lead to a loss of trust and credibility among customers. Behavioral integrity is crucial for building and maintaining trust. Brands must ensure their messaging and actions are aligned to foster trust and credibility with their audience.

It's not enough to assign the emotion-sparking content to the brand team and then the logic-rationalising content to the performance/growth/ecom team. There needs to be a blend: both teams need to speak to both sides of the brain in their content respectively.

Just look at the Wim Hof example to see how this impacts the customer!

The brand marketing first-approach (to reel in customers), then performance marketing second-approach (convert them with their rationality) seems to be a very VERY old notion... Old enough to have been inspired by cavemen in fact:

"When we were still in caves, the emotional brain was responsible for quickly looking at the surroundings and identifying whether anything interesting (prey) is available. Once it has identified something interesting, it will decide to pursue the prey and use the logical brain to rationalize the decision and go for the kill." (source)

This approach is still entertained by some companies today.

But I disagree: this takes a view of your audience being non-evolved. And means your marketing will be transparent and disjointed.

The Brand vs. Performance Perspective

Brand-before-performance point of view:

I’ve seen brand teams powered by passionately-enthusiastic, creative people. They’re in it for the long-game. They focus on the feelings they want to trigger in their viewers and followers.

But when it comes to writing web copy or launch emails, the team is tasked with creating assets outside of their job description.

These ‘creatives’ are exactly that: creative. We’re talking social media execs, blog writers and campaign directors. They write what sounds ‘good’, and the feedback they receive is on whether something sounds clever and hits the right ‘feels’.

Assets are often created based on conjecture.

The kinds of companies that prioritise brand — and sneer at performance marketers (at least in the outdoor and adventure sports realm) — want to be the ‘cool’ brands.. They have less-than-traditional backgrounds.

They represent sub-cultures. Which is awesome for innovation. But being perceived as ‘cool’ isn’t usually enough to sustain a business in the long term. 

They are often companies run by people who’ve turned a passion into a career. They have personal lived experience of the motivation that has got them to where they are, so they feel that should be enough to generate sales (which it isn’t, by the way); and actively selling feels wrong and gimmicky as it jars with their ‘vibe’.

Pitfalls?

Likes and shares don’t tell you how a campaign is impacting sales (or at least not very clearly).

Advocacy, awareness and audience perception of the brand are difficult to track, so they lose importance in terms of the key metrics for your business.

As Cait Lambert (in The CMO Podcast interview) said “Just because you make a super cool ad with a super cool agency doesn’t mean you get to say ‘Yeah, but nobody can expect to see outcomes from that’.” I agree. 

Performance-before-brand point of view:

These are the brands that outwardly state that they're looking for fast growth and want a data-driven approach. They’ve got a marketable product and a streamlined sales strategy.

But the website/ecommerce/growth team is usually made up of marketing generalists, developers and analysts — not often trained in conversion copywriting conventions. 

[aside: I don’t need to tell you the difference between a content writer and a conversion copywriter? Or the difference between a creative copywriter and conversion copywriter, do I?]

These brands often put a lot of energy into pushing paid social ads. Their marketing is full of product shots with no real people to be seen. It's all feature/benefit driven, with less of a focus on the emotion that should (or could) be felt using the products.

Then there was a mentoring session I had with a media agency owner. They said: "You have to make a decision to either prioritise brand marketing or performance marketing and you can't be both.” — They believed that some brands are all brand. Others are all performance.

And even though I got the feeling this person kind of looked down on them as having no longevity, they still insisted that you have to make a choice between the two.

But I disagree. This either/or mentality is limiting and outdated. It's time for a more integrated approach.

Solutions for Alignment

Ken Favaro on The CMO Podcast said: “Most companies lack the measurement tools that they need to really crack this tension between brand and performance marketing.” 

But Ken’s brand’s “equal-measuring structural equations modelling” process (location-segmented, census-aligned scoring methodology which has to be repeated on a weekly basis, combining qualitative and quantitative measurements: cited in Harvard Business Review) is too expensive to manage for most brands. 

If you too don’t have access to this time-absorbing process and capital-sucking algorithm, I’ve got a few alternative solutions for you:

1// Create comprehensive brand messaging guidelines

Solid Brand Messaging Guidelines ensure consistency in all aspects of the way your brand communicates itself to others. These guidelines should cover:

• Brand voice and tone

• Key messages and values

• How to adapt the brand voice for different contexts (including performance marketing)

• Results = more trust

  
  

”Trust is enhanced when leaders demonstrate emotional attunement by acknowledging and responding to the emotions of their followers.” >> For brands, emotional attunement means understanding and responding to customer emotions through consistent and empathetic messaging. Inconsistent messaging can break this connection, reducing trust. Emotional attunement through consistent and empathetic messaging is crucial for building trust. Brands must ensure their communications resonate with customer emotions to foster stronger connections and trust.” — Goleman, D. “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.” Simons14_Behavioral_Integrity.pdf, p.6.

2// Develop a message map

A Message Map gets inside the head of a company’s target audience to understand their frame of mind throughout the entire customer journey. This allows a business to track (and then be able to address) their audience appropriately at different stages of the funnel, ensuring that they don’t lose customers at pivotal decision-making moments. 

This map should outline:

• How your audience's mindset, priorities, and hesitations change across the awareness spectrum (from problem aware to solution aware to product aware to most aware with intent to buy)

• What messages resonate at each stage of the funnel

• How to maintain consistency while addressing evolving customer needs

3// Integrate storytelling across the funnel

Challenge the notion that storytelling is only for top-of-funnel content. Provide examples of effective storytelling at each stage of the funnel, emphasising the often-neglected bottom-of-funnel storytelling about customer transformation and outcomes.

Storytelling isn't just for ToFu content. Here's how to use it effectively at each stage:

• ToFu: Inspirational stories of affiliates + brand origin/founder's story

• BoFu (most neglected and underutilised!): The story of the client + the transformation they’ll experience

This approach ensures consistent messaging throughout the funnel, engaging customers emotionally and rationally at each stage. It also creates a sense of journey and progress, much like in adventure sports, keeping customers motivated and moving towards a purchase decision.

For instance, a fitness brand could use this approach by first showcasing impressive transformation stories (aspiration), then offering workout tips and nutritional advice (skills development), and finally presenting their product as the key to achieving these results (specific benefits).

4// Bring heart to performance marketing

Performance marketing doesn't have to be pushy, gimmicky, or dry. It can (and should) evoke emotion and feel authentic to your brand.

Examples:

• The PDP I wrote for PAF wine: "Tasting notes: pairs well with friends, sitting on your 3x3m London patio on a spontaneously sunny Wednesday evening."

5// Create connected funnels

Skilled copywriting and messaging strategy can serve as a bridge between brand and performance marketing. Emphasise the value this brings to marketing managers and directors in creating cohesive, effective campaigns.

A connected funnel is the best way to measure long-term impact of consistent brand-performance messaging on customer lifetime value.

For example, you could encourage them to sign up for something free from your socials/ads so you’re able to start tracking their activity and the effectiveness of your campaigns.

So you’ll need a handful of new landing pages that message-match that initial touchpoint that drove them to action. 

This is how you start to measure the effectiveness of brand marketing and create a seamless experience:

• Develop landing pages that match the messaging from your ads or social content

• Gradually increase the sophistication of your content as customers move through the funnel 

When we know that brand marketers find it harder to measure the effectiveness of their content, the solution would be to create more funnels, directly connecting ToFu and BoFu.

The role of copywriting + messaging strategy

A skilled copywriter and messaging strategist can be the bridge between your brand and performance marketing efforts. We can:

• Create a brand voice guide to ensure consistency across all touchpoints

• Develop message maps to address evolving customer needs, sensitive to their growing sophistication 

• Craft performance marketing copy that maintains your brand's personality and values while also providing tangible data

Remember: Every interaction that a customer has with your brand is an opportunity to build trust. Don't let inconsistency erode the connection you've worked so hard to build.

Performance marketing doesn't mean a loss of emotion or identity, voice or personality. I do performance marketing, but with a heart.

And this heart can translate into every aspect of the way your business communicates in a way that keeps things coherent for your customers. 

By mapping all the touchpoints along the customer journey it’s possible to integrate the voice, messaging, and infusion of your values across all your key performance marketing content. Even through micro moments such as:

• Welcome sequences that drive action and help you learn more about your customers

• 404 error pages

• Landing pages

• Product descriptions

• Order confirmations

Conclusion

It's time to stop seeing brand and performance marketing as opposing forces. By integrating these approaches, you can:

1. Create marketing touchpoints that stick in both the heads and hearts of your future customers

2. Preserve the integrity of your brand AND your bottom line (because without a strong message, your sales copy has no power or resonance)

3. Improve both the immediate pay-off of your marketing AND the lifetime value of your customers

When you follow a brand on Insta, it's a social signal coming from you — the follower. When you buy a product from a brand, it's a social signal coming from you — the buyer. When you feel seen and understood by a brand, you feel loyalty towards them. When you feel seen and understood through the creation of a useful service or product, you feel a loyalty to them.

The same outcomes. Different tactics.

So, to summarise: I believe brand marketing can and should be more strategically linked to performance marketing content. To make this effective, BoFu should always have the same values, parameters, voice and confidence as ToFu.

Time to bridge that gap.

Create more memorable and measurable moments for your customers. With strategic guidance from a copywriting expert *ahem, it’s me*

Give me a call to chat about how we can work together to develop both your messaging strategy and brand voice cohesively to win both the hearts and minds of your customers. 

Or if you’re already on your way and just need a little strategic signposting, I can identify the key touchpoints for your business that speak to both the left AND right side of your audience's brain. 

Together we can align both the brand and performance elements of your business harmoniously to boost impact, efficiency and longevity across the board.

I will guide you through the process of creating a seamless experience for your future customers; from their first click on your socials, to nurture welcome email sequences, to product detail pages.