Why Strong Brands Get Better Marketing Results

Last month, we met with an internet service provider (ISP) to discuss their marketing. They were spending a fortune on digital ads but not seeing the conversions to match.  

This week, a hotel in Westchester came to us with the exact same issue: big digital spend with little to show for it. Two different industries, two different geographic locations, vastly different target audiences, and one common problem: conversions.  

For the past decade or so, marketing has been living through a strange identity crisis. 

On one side of the table sits performance marketing—the world of clicks, conversions, retargeting, and dashboards that light up with numbers every morning.  

On the other side sits brand marketing—the long-term work of shaping perception, reputation, and emotional connection. 

And for years, performance marketing has been winning the argument. 

Why? Because it’s measurable, immediate, and defensible. You can show the CFO a dashboard and say, “We spent $10,000 and got 1,000 leads.” 

Brand, by comparison, has often been treated like the redheaded stepchild. Important in theory, but harder to prove. And because of that, it’s often treated as a “nice to have.” Something you invest in when times are good and pull back on when budgets tighten. 

But that framing misses something fundamental. 

The entire premise that brand and performance are competing ideas is fundamentally wrong. They’re partners, not rivals. 

What the Data Shows

If you want your marketing to actually work, especially in a world where AI and automation are creating efficiencies in tactical marketing, ignoring brand can be a high-stakes error. 

A recent industry report, The Awareness Advantage, looked at this exact relationship between brand awareness and marketing performance. The findings weren’t surprising to those of us who have spent decades building brands, but they’re incredibly useful in proving what many marketers have long suspected:  

Brands with higher awareness see 2.86 times higher conversion rates in performance campaigns.  Even more interesting, increasing brand awareness from 30% to 40% improves marketing efficiency by 43%. 

Those are big gains. That means performance marketing works best when people know who you already are.  

Familiarity Matters More Than We Think 

Think about how you actually behave as a buyer. 

If you see an ad for a company you’ve never heard of before, you’re cautious. Maybe you click. Maybe you browse. But there’s friction.  

Now imagine you see an ad from a brand you’ve heard of before. You’ve seen their content. You’ve read something about them. Maybe you heard their CEO on a podcast. Maybe a friend mentioned them.That click suddenly feels safer and more credible—more trustworthy.  

That’s not a function of targeting. That’s familiarity. 

Pause on that for a minute. Increases in awareness produce a massive improvement in advertising efficiency. This is why strong brands spend less to acquire customers and weak brands have to keep feeding the advertising machine just to survive. 

What Most Marketers Get Wrong 

Over the last 15 years, marketing has leaned heavily into tools that promised precision and accountability: Google Ads. Facebook Ads. Programmatic targeting. Marketing automation. Together they created a model that was irresistible: invest budget, measure every click, impression, and conversion. 

Suddenly marketing started behaving like a vending machine. Put money in, leads come out, and for a while, it worked splendidly. Startups grew quickly, DTC brands exploded, and digital agencies built entire businesses around paid acquisition. 

But something else started happening. 

Customer acquisition costs began climbing. Campaign performance started declining. The same ads stopped working as well. Many companies hit a plateau.  Why? Because performance marketing works best when people already know who you are. 

That’s a seismic shift.  

Clicks Don’t Equal Brand Strength 

One of the most interesting findings in the report challenges a belief that has dominated marketing dashboards for years. The study found no meaningful correlation between click-through rate (CTR) and brand awareness. 

In other words, clicks don’t necessarily mean your brand is healthy. They might mean your headline was clever. Or your targeting was good. Or your discount was big. But clicks are not the same thing as brand strength.  

The metrics that matter show up in different ways:  

• Higher conversion rates 

• Stronger retention 

• Customer loyalty 

• Pricing power 

  
  

Those are brand outcomes. And they’re the reason strong brands outperform weaker competitors over time. 

Brand Is the Foundation 

One of the smartest lines in the report describes brand as the foundation of marketing performance. That metaphor is exactly right. Imagine trying to build a skyscraper on sand. You can keep stacking floors higher, but eventually, the structure becomes unstable. The same thing happens with performance marketing. 

Without brand: 

• Advertising gets more expensive 

• Conversion rates fall 

• Customers churn faster 

• Competitors win on price 

With brand, trust is established earlier, decisions happen faster, and reputation helps marketing become more efficient across the board. Brand trust is the most powerful conversion tool in the world. 

Early Adopters vs. The Majority 

There’s another pattern many companies experience: Early growth is fast, marketing seems easy, and customers arrive quickly. But then things stall. This happens because early adopters behave differently from the broader market. 

Early adopters love new things. They’re curious and willing to take risks on unknown brands. But the majority of buyers are more cautious and seek reassurance (including social proof). Have you ever bought anything on Amazon with less than four stars? That’s reassurance. And a lot of that reassurance comes from a strong brand. 

The report notes that many young companies plateau because they exhaust the pool of people willing to buy from an unfamiliar brand. At that point, growth depends on something different: Building awareness among the broader market. 

In other words, brand building. 

Brand Building Isn’t Just Advertising 

When people hear the phrase “brand marketing,” they often imagine giant Super Bowl ads or expensive billboards. That’s part of it but not the whole story.  

Brand is built through every signal your organization sends into the world: 

• Your leadership voice 

• Media coverage and PR 

• Customer experience and reputation 

• Content and storytelling 

• Company culture 

Every one of these signals contributes to how the market perceives you. 

And that’s the message we shared with the ISP whose conversions had stalled. With a few targeted shifts in how they communicate their brand and how that carried through their customer journey, they’re in a much better position to turn interest into demand. The expectation isn’t overnight change but over time, those adjustments will lead to stronger, more qualified (and brand-driven) conversions in the coming months. By doing so, their take rates will grow more meaningfully this year, making both the C-Suite and PE investors happy. 

But—be careful that you’re not focused on one campaign. The report makes an important point about this.

Brand is built exposure by exposure, interaction by interaction. That’s why companies that consistently invest in reputation and storytelling outperform companies that only focus on ads. 

The 37% Awareness Threshold 

One particularly interesting insight in the research involves a tipping point. 

At around 37% brand awareness, the efficiency gains from brand marketing start to shift. Below that level, increases in awareness dramatically improve marketing efficiency. Above that level, improvements continue—but more gradually. 

Why does that matter? Because it shows how brand investment changes over time. Early on, brand awareness fuels growth. Later, brand strength protects market leadership. Either way, it’s still doing important work. 

Why This Matters Right Now 

Like the Westchester hotel looking to fill rooms, this conversation isn’t academic. It’s about the bottom line. It’s incredibly relevant to what’s happening in marketing today.  

We’re entering an era where AI can generate campaigns, ads, copy, and content almost instantly. Execution is becoming commoditized. When everyone has access to the same tools, what becomes valuable? Judgment. Storytelling. Trust. Reputation. Brand. 

The rise of AI makes brand more important than ever. Because when tactics become easy, differentiation must come from somewhere else. 

And that somewhere else is brand. 

What Smart Companies Do Differently 

Companies that truly understand marketing do something interesting. They don’t separate brand and performance. They integrate them. Brand creates demand. Performance captures it. Brand builds trust. Performance converts it. Brand expands the audience. Performance monetizes it. It’s not an either-or decision. It’s a system.  

The report calls this relationship complementary—and that’s exactly right. When brand and performance work together, marketing becomes dramatically more efficient.  

The Real ROI of Brand 

Executives often ask a fair question: “What’s the ROI of brand?” 

It’s the wrong question. Brand isn’t just another marketing channel. Brand is the economic engine behind all the other channels. It determines: 

• How much you pay to acquire customers 

• How quickly people trust you 

• How much pricing power you have 

• How resilient you are during downturns 

• How likely customers are to recommend you 

These aren’t marketing outcomes, they’re business outcomes. 

A Final Thought 

For years, marketers have argued about brand versus performance like it’s a boxing match. But the reality is far simpler. Performance marketing is the accelerator. Brand is the engine.   You can push the pedal all you want.

But if the engine underneath the hood is weak, you’re not going very far. The companies that understand this build something different. They invest in reputation. They tell better stories. They create familiarity long before the sale happens.  And when their performance campaigns run, something magical happens. People already know who they are.  

And that makes all the difference. It’s a dynamic we’re always thinking about at Harry, and one that continues to shape how we approach building brands that perform.  

Bob Knight is President & CEO at Harry. Reach out at bob@harry.marketing.