You Can't Performance Market Your Way Out of a Weak Brand

For years, advertisers used performance marketing to compensate for weak brands. Now, strong brands are what make performance marketing work.

I know that because we helped build the playbook.

RedTag grew fast as a performance marketing agency. We scaled brands through Facebook, Google, and eventually TikTok and other platforms. We learned the algorithms, figured out the audiences, and drove some pretty incredible returns.

Back in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, 20x returns were common, and easy to achieve. And frankly, some of the creative wasn't even that good. Get the targeting right, put a decent ad in front of the right person, and you could make a lot of money.

That’s over now.

The algorithms got smarter. Your brand has to get stronger.

Meta and Google are better than ever at finding potential customers. AI has taken over more of the targeting and optimization that once gave performance agencies a major advantage.

We still need great media buyers. Absolutely. But you can't build your entire competitive advantage around knowing which buttons to push inside an ad platform. When the platforms are getting better at finding the same customers for everybody, what separates one advertiser from another?

Your brand. Your message. Your creative. And whether anyone actually believes what you're telling them.

Consumers are more discerning today. They're seeing more content than ever, and they're also thinking harder about where their money goes. If you're selling a premium product, you better give them a good reason to choose it over something cheaper on Amazon.

Great creative isn't a luxury anymore.

We saw this shift coming, which is why we've invested so heavily in creative at RedTag over the last ten years. We've built an Emmy Award-winning video production team alongside talented designers and strategists whose work has earned Gold ADDYs, AIGA recognition, and more.

We didn't do all that to collect awards. We did it because creative drives performance.

And I'm not just talking about beautiful commercials. I'm talking about work that gets attention, tells a story, and gives someone a reason to care. 

You can still waste a fortune putting great creative behind a bad strategy. But the reverse is also true. Great targeting can't save a brand that gives people nothing to believe in.

Creators have changed how people buy.

This is where the creator economy comes in.

People don't just want another ad telling them a product is great. They want to see real people using it, talking about it, and sharing their experiences. A creator who has earned the trust of an audience can make a connection that a traditional ad simply can't. This isn’t because every creator recommendation is automatically trustworthy. It's because the best creators understand their audiences, know how to tell a story, and specialize in making content people actually want to watch.

That's why we see creator partnerships as part of the marketing engine, not a separate influencer campaign somebody runs on the side.

Our Creator Management Services helps brands bring that work together. We find the right creators, manage the relationships and content, and turn what we learn into stronger creative and paid campaigns.

Creators help people discover and experience a brand. Strong brand strategy gives their stories direction. Performance marketing makes it easier to turn that interest into sales.

That's how these pieces should work together.

Use organic content to learn. Then put money behind what works.

One of the best ways to develop better advertising creative is to stop guessing.

Test content organically. A lot of it.

Try different founder videos. Different hooks. Different stories. Different edits. Test headlines, designs, compositions, and calls to action. Don't make three pieces of creative, pick your favorite, and hope the algorithm figures it out. Make dozens. In some cases, hundreds. See what gets people to stop, engage, share, and ask questions.

Then take those learnings into paid media and test for the thing that really matters, business results.

Organic engagement isn't the same as conversion, and a post that performs well organically won't always win as an ad. But it gives you a valuable, low-cost place to learn before you scale.

We've used this approach to build stronger campaigns and get back toward the kinds of returns we saw in the earlier days of performance marketing. The difference is we're not relying on media buying alone to get there. We lead with Brand.

You can't keep harvesting demand you never created.

For a long time, everybody wanted to live at the bottom of the funnel. And I get it. We did a lot of that, too. Why invest in awareness when you could reach someone already shopping and make a sale today?

Especially during and right after COVID, when consumers were spending freely and there were plenty of buyers in the market. A lot of businesses got used to quick returns.

But bottom-of-funnel advertising captures demand. It doesn't create all the demand you need for the future.

If you aren't consistently introducing new people to your brand, telling your story, and building affinity, who exactly are you planning to convert six months from now?

You can't just keep fishing in the same pond and expect the fish to multiply. This is why I want business owners to think differently about timelines. As a planning framework, I expect bottom-of-funnel programs to start showing measurable traction within roughly 8 to 12 weeks. Brand investments often need 8 to 12 months, sometimes longer, to show their full value.

If you judge every brand investment by next week's return on ad spend, you're going to underinvest in the very thing that makes next year's sales possible.

Brand, creators, and conversion. One strategy.

Here's how I believe modern marketing should work.

Brand gives people a reason to believe. It tells them who you are, what you stand for, and why you're worth choosing.

Creators bring that brand to life through real people, experiences, and stories. They help build familiarity and trust with audiences you may not be reaching today.

Performance marketing converts that demand. Search, paid social, Open AI ads, retargeting, landing pages, and smart optimization turn attention and interest into leads and customers.

And the whole thing feeds itself. What you learn from creators helps improve paid creative. What you learn from conversion data helps sharpen your messaging. What your brand stands for makes all of that creative more meaningful.

You're not choosing brand over performance. You’re focused on Brand because you want performance. Brand, creators, and performance all working together.

We build brands that build belief.

At RedTag, we're a strategy-first agency that builds brands worth believing in, and the advertising, websites, and creative that bring them to life.

We build brands that spark inspiration. Brands that inspire adventure. Brands that tell a story. Brands that change the game. Brands that work hard and grow local.

That doesn't mean we've moved away from performance marketing. It's exactly the opposite. We're bringing brand strategy, award-winning creative, creators, and serious media-buying expertise together because that's what it takes to drive growth now.

The old approach was to find buyers and keep putting ads in front of them. The better approach is to build a brand people want to buy from in the first place. 

You can't performance market your way out of a weak brand. You have to build a stronger one.

Quick answers

Does brand building improve performance marketing?

Yes. A strong brand gives people a reason to recognize, trust, and choose you. Performance marketing can then convert more of that demand through paid media, search, and conversion-focused experiences.

Where do creators fit in a full-funnel strategy?

Creators help introduce people to a brand and build credibility through relatable content. Their stories can also inform paid creative that moves interested audiences toward a purchase.

How long does brand marketing take to pay off?

It depends on the business and the measurement approach. I often use 8 to 12 months as a planning horizon for brand investment, compared with roughly 8 to 12 weeks to evaluate early traction from bottom-of-funnel campaigns.