How to Think About the Balance

The right ratio depends on your brand’s maturity, market conditions, and growth goals; but the principle is constant: short-term performance delivers results today, while brand investment guarantees results tomorrow.

Research shows that maintaining a roughly 60/40 balance between brand and performance creates the healthiest long-term growth trajectory. The exact number may shift, but the logic remains: you can’t cut awareness and expect acquisition costs to stay low forever.

Performance relies on the pipeline of future demand that brand creates.

The Financial Case for Balance

To finance leaders, brand spend often looks inefficient, there’s no direct attribution, and the ROI takes time to appear. But when measured through incrementality or Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER), the long-term payoff becomes clear: brands with stronger awareness spend less to acquire each customer over time.

Think of it this way:

• Brand marketing improves the effectiveness of every future dollar.
• Performance marketing converts that effectiveness into immediate results.

It’s capital growth versus cash flow; both matter, and both can be optimized.

Adjusting the Mix as You Scale

Early-stage brands often need to lean heavily on performance to prove traction. But as they grow, the path to scale shifts.

• Early-stage: Performance dominates, but brand experiments begin.
• Mid-stage: Budgets rebalance; awareness becomes a driver of efficiency.
• Late-stage: Brand and performance work in tandem; brand maintains share, performance monetizes it.

This evolution isn’t about spend for spend’s sake. It’s about ensuring every dollar has a defined role in both short- and long-term growth.

Common Watchouts

1. Overreacting to short-term results. Brand impact takes time; cutting too soon resets momentum.
2. Equal spend ≠ equal impact. Balance is about role, not parity. The two should complement, not compete.
3. Lack of alignment across teams. Finance, creative, and media must understand the shared purpose of brand investment.
4. Ignoring cross-channel effects. Performance metrics often undercount the influence of brand campaigns on conversion data.

How to Build a Balanced Strategy

1. Start with clear objectives. Define what you expect from each stage of your media system: awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty.
2. Budget by time horizon. Brand budgets should be reviewed quarterly; performance weekly.
3. Measure by contribution. Use MER and incrementality testing to evaluate impact, not just attribution.
4. Protect brand investment during downturns. Cutting awareness to save budget often increases future CAC and slows recovery.

Balance doesn’t mean compromise. It means discipline, investing across time horizons with intent.

Takeaway

Performance drives revenue. Brand creates the conditions for that revenue to exist.

Growth comes from managing both, not choosing one.

When you treat brand and performance as partners in one system, you stop reacting to performance data and start building compounding efficiency.