This is one a series of posts trying to explain marketing jargon to my engineer friends. I will explain as many terms as possible without the marketing jargon so its easy to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brand marketing<\/strong> is the practice of building and maintaining the perception<\/em> of your company in the minds of your audience. It\u2019s not about immediate clicks or conversions \u2014 it\u2019s about making sure that when someone eventually<\/em> needs your product, your name is the first one they think of. Brand marketing operates on a much longer time horizon than performance marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is by far the most visible form of marketing, that is by design. Your first perception of the product lives and dies here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Brand encompasses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brand marketing doesn\u2019t have a clean attribution model. You can\u2019t draw a straight line from a brand campaign to a sale. When someone buys a MacBook, what motivated them to buy it? This is called the dark funnel<\/strong> the invisible sequence of brand touchpoints that influence a purchase decision but can\u2019t be individually tracked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brand marketers use proxies to measure brand health:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In most companies, there\u2019s a constant tension between brand (long-term, hard to measure) and performance (short-term, measurable). CFOs love performance marketing because it has clear ROI. Brand marketers argue that without brand investment, performance marketing gets more expensive over time because no one knows who you are, so your ads, performance efforts have to work harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Why Brand Is Hard to Measure<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Brand vs. Performance: The Classic Marketing Tension<\/h3>\n\n\n\n