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We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.
I think at the end of the day,
companies need to do both.
And I think what decides what you
focus on, when one, what type of
business you are, look, if you're a
commoditized business and you have
kind of the same feature set or you
have a similar product as everyone
else, yeah, brand is going to be very
important because how else do you win?
The other thing I would say is
it really depends what stage
of the business you're at.
So if you're just beginning, yeah,
you're not going to be able to invest
a ton of money on just brand marketing
because you need to prove the ROI
or if you're a bootstrap business.
You need to make sure the dollars
that you're spending are getting a
return This is a mistake that a lot of
marketers make is they look at these
large companies They'll look at airbnb.
They'll look at nike.
They'll look at like uber and they'll
say see this company is doing this That
means we should do it too Well, these
companies have like tens of billions or
hundreds of billions of dollars And you're
trying to say that your small business or
your SAS business that's making, I don't
know, a hundred K ARR should use the same
marketing strategy that Nike should use.
Like it just doesn't even make sense.
So welcome to the grown
convert marketing show.
Today we're going to be talking about
brand versus performance marketing.
Basically I'm going to interview
Benji because he has some thoughts
on this based on a that's been
circulating in the marketing ecosystem.
I really had to stretch my words to
not use the term viral, um, because I
don't think it's necessarily gone viral
about Nike and some decisions they made
and then how people are, um, making
conclusions about brand versus what
I guess kind of corporate marketers
refer to as direct response marketing.
Um, but in general, before we get
started, if you like these discussions,
these in depth discussions, please
like, and subscribe to us on YouTube.
If that's what you're listening
and watching or subscribe, uh,
or review us on your podcast.
Player grow and convert is a
content marketing and PPC agency.
And, but this podcast is just us
having larger content or marketing
discussions in general, including,
but not limited to content and SEO.
So Benji, uh, you should start by giving
a summary or if you want, I can give
at least my kind of slightly outsider
summary of this LinkedIn post that
someone wrote about Nike and how they
lost a bunch of shareholder value and
revenue because of a switch they made a
few years ago from quote unquote brand
marketing to direct response marketing.
Sure.
You can, you can give a summary
or I can just go into the threads
and we can talk through it.
Well, yeah, the, the LinkedIn posts
and we can project this on YouTube
and we'll obviously link to the post.
Um, is by a guy, Mossimo Guinko.
Yeah, good luck, good luck, uh,
pronouncing your Italian there.
My apologies to Mossimo
and, uh, his last name.
It's fine.
As someone who's named Devesh,
Khanal spell the way it is.
Like, I, I, I can, I feel
like, I feel for him.
Um, he says basically in short that,
um, what, in 2020 at some point, There
was a new CEO of Nike, John Donahue,
replacing the old CEO, Mark, uh, Parker,
and he also got a new, um, president
of like consumer product and brand.
I love these big enterprise companies and
all these like random, like, like what
is the president of consumer product and
brand do that's different than the CEO?
I'm sure there's a very good
answer and I'm just showing myself
as being completely oblivious to
how enterprise companies work.
Um, the post says what they ended up
doing is a few things, three things,
but the main one was becoming a
DTC led company direct to consumer,
meaning having majority or focusing
their sales on sales from Nike dot
com as opposed to, um, wholesale.
Meaning sending their shoes to
like a Foot Locker or whoever and a
million other department stores and
shoe stores and selling it that way.
Um, the other sort of smaller changes was
they were going to eliminate categories.
So like football shoes versus soccer
versus this, that and the other.
Um, and then along with being DTC
change its marketing to focus on.
Um, like this is what I was calling direct
response, which I'm realizing I might be
just a word that I inserted and he didn't
actually say like data driven marketing
and digital marketing lead, which later in
the long linkedin post, it says it's like
a lot of performance marketing, um, or I
don't know, like just various online ads.
And I don't remember in the post,
Benji, if they say, and this is a
key detail to this discussion, what,
what, what marketing were they?
Yeah, I have it up as well.
What marketing were they not doing?
Like, like what marketing
did they stop doing?
Like, I don't know if they, I don't
think they stopped doing a lot of
their, I'm just going to call it that.
I don't think Nike called it
that, like influencer marketing.
Like they still have like famous athletes.
Yes.
No, I think, I think they just made, they
made a switch to having it being more
data driven, I guess, as opposed to prior.
They, they did a lot more brand
marketing that wasn't data driven.
I think that was the main switch.
And so I think that's what a
lot of people latched on to.
Um, I mean, we can, I'm going to
start with just different posts that
I've seen over the last few days.
And I think, It's funny because
marketers are now just taking sides and
basically pulling what they want from
the story out and making the case for
why their marketing function should
get more spend or priority within their
own organization based off the story.
So for example, you see this brand
marketer, founder of brands on
basically Every CMO should read the
story because it basically outlines
how the Nike moved from a brand driven
model to a data driven model, and
then they released their earnings in
2024 and lost 25 billion in a day.
And, and this is the sole reason why.
And so I think this is what's funny about
the narrative that came from the story
is Nike had one bad earnings release.
And everyone equates that 25 billion
drop to Nike moving to performance
marketing, even though this happened
in 2020 and it's now four years later.
And then all of a sudden this one bad
earnings released is now because of this
switch that happened four years ago.
So that doesn't make too
much sense to me, but okay.
Like it, that doesn't really matter.
And you can kind of see here.
All these different posts from these
different people, just basically
saying performance marketing sucks.
Brand is the best way to do it.
Nike has always grown off of
brand and this is why, um, you
shouldn't measure anything.
So like Nike invested billions into
something that was less effective,
but easier to measure versus
something that was more effective,
uh, and less easy to measure.
And so the conclusion is,
You should do marketing.
That's not easy to measure because
that's what grows companies essentially.
Uh, here's another example on
LinkedIn, kind of the same thing.
What went wrong?
The erosion of the brand, they
skimped on brand building and then
they lost 25 billion in market cap.
The details of that sentence,
I think are important.
It said if they skimp on brand
building, reducing, what was it?
Brand awareness.
Yeah, here we can pull it back out.
So.
Yeah.
Nike skimped on brand building costing
the mind share brand prominence
and 25 billion in market cap.
And then this person then goes to
sell their own product based off this.
We built this as a way to measure
brand building out effectiveness.
Yeah.
But what I find really interesting
about the story is everyone pulls
what they want out of it and makes
the case for why they should do brand
instead of performance marketing.
And I think it's a timely story in that.
I think we've talked about this on a
number of episodes so far, but this
is kind of just what's happening in
the broader marketing sphere overall
in terms of just the conversations
that are being had is there's this
big shift from the last 10 to 15
years have been really focused on
measuring the performance of marketing.
Because you had the proper attribution
tools in place, um, the last 10 or
15 years were really driven by online
advertising for a lot of businesses.
So companies invested a lot
in Facebook, Google ads, and
those were very easy to measure.
And I think over the last two or three
years, that's become a lot more difficult
in terms of, uh, ad performance has Gone
down, I would say overall, like if you
talk to a lot of DTC brands, a lot of
them over the last 10 years were built
off of paid advertising and that's gotten
a lot more challenging, mainly due to the
switch in, uh, iOS tracking that happened,
I believe two or three years ago.
Um, and then on top of that, this year
you have GA4, uh, Being rolled out, which
becomes a lot harder for brands to measure
the performance of their marketing.
And so the conversation has moved
from measure everything to let's
not measure anything in brand
is the most important thing.
And to me, I think this conversation
is much more nuanced than just drawing
that conclusion from one story or
just from kind of the shift that has
been happening as marketing has been.
Become more challenging to
measure to be fair to those posts.
I don't, I didn't see in those posts.
And I would imagine if any of those
guys were on like right now and having
a conversation with us, I didn't see
them say, don't measure anything.
But yes, they were using that Nike
LinkedIn post as an example of like,
without saying it, they were kind of
implying that brand marketing is more
important than performance marketing.
And, and that's, that's what I don't
agree with because I think there's,
look, I think at the end of the
day, companies need to do both.
And I think what decides what you focus on
when one, what type of business you are.
So look, if you're a commoditized business
and you have kind of the same feature set
or you have a similar product as everyone
else, yeah, brand is going to be very
important because how else do you win?
And like, if you are Nike, if you are
Nike and you have, and you sell running
shoes and there's 10 other brands or a
hundred other brands that sell running
shoes, how are you going to win?
You can't just say, my shoe is better.
Because 99.
99 percent of people who buy Nikes
versus Adidas versus whatever,
the shoes are undetectable.
I'm sure like a bunch of runners that are
listening are gonna be like, No, Deveshh.
But like, let's be honest.
The majority of people
buying Nikes are us.
And like regular people and
the shoes are a commodity.
It's like other than the brand logo on it.
It's the actual performance
and features is undetectable.
Yeah.
So that's, so that's one thing I would
say on the brand versus performance.
The other thing I would say is
it really depends what stage
of the business you're at.
So if you're just beginning, yeah,
you're not going to be able to invest
a ton of money on just brand marketing
because you need to prove the ROI or
if you're a bootstrap business, you
need to make sure the dollars that
you're spending are getting a return.
And I think this is a mistake that a lot
of marketers make is they look at these
large companies, they'll look at Airbnb,
they'll look at Nike, they'll look at
like Uber and they'll say, and they'll
say, see, This company is doing this.
That means we should do it too.
Well, look, these, these are, these
companies have like tens of billions
or hundreds of billions of dollars.
And you're trying to say that your
small business or your SAS business
that's making, I don't know, a hundred
K ARR should use the same marketing
strategy that Nike should use.
Like, it just doesn't even make sense.
And this is no, no, it's more
than just the funding difference.
Yes, Nike, Uber, Apple have way
more budget than you do, and so
they can do things and take bets.
But to me, there's a bigger issue.
Even if you had the budget of them,
there's this big thing that money
can't buy immediately, which is they
have massive brand awareness and
mindshare in their space already.
If you are looking to buy a phone
or a computer, you, Apple does not
need to show up in a search to tell
people we sell phones or computers.
Nike does not need to do grow and convert
and, and be like a top 10 running shoes.
Like everybody knows what Nike
is when you're looking for shoes,
especially athletic shoes, right?
If you're looking for a ride
share, Uber and Lyft don't need
to like say, Hey, we do this.
You know, we can take you
to the club and then back.
So that's, that I think
is the number one thing.
And the second thing I wanted to add
to what you said is it's not just
like the scale at which this doesn't
apply is not just tiny startups.
I have seen, especially on the growth
rock AB testing side, the agency I've had
outside of growing convert for a million
years, Clients who are D2C e commerce.
And there's this debate between what
my A B testing firm does and the low
the client team that's like advocating
for us of optimizing conversion rates
and their Google ads and the brand
team that often says we can't change
the website to do that because there's
this brand consideration or whatever.
And so I see the microcosm of this fight.
Even 50 million a year companies use.
I think can't be equating their marketing.
Like I have had clients who make
in that order, tens of millions of
revenue, let's say 30, 50 million
a year D2C from the website where
we have debates about changes to
make on the website and the someone
from the brand team brings up LVMH.
In other words, the parent
company of Louis Vuitton or they
bring up a Nike or whatever.
And you're like, I have to buy, I have
to bite my tongue to be like, Sorry, who
is Louis Vuitton in this conversation?
Like, what are you talking about?
Like, like, Louis Vuitton?
When you have, like, the richest
rappers on the planet talking about your
brand in rap songs and carrying it and
wearing it on Instagram and you have
Kim Kardashian showing up courtside to
a Lakers game and putting your purse
down on, like, the court, then we can
talk about us imitating Louis Vuittons.
Thing or Birkin or whatever like nobody
like even if you have a little bit
of brand presence You are not them.
And so the mechanism of what marketing
channel is important changes So
going to grow and convert, right?
The big thing we do is show up,
put our clients in searches.
When someone's searching for that product
category to say, like, you're looking
for IT security software and you type
in like best IT security software.
We have our clients show up.
With the number one or number two, number
three blog post and mention their I.
T.
security software at length and sell it.
If you are one of those
companies, let's, let's do the
B2B software equivalent of them.
If you are Salesforce, which I
would argue is the Apple, Nike,
Louis Vuitton of their category.
You don't need that.
That's the grown convert using
grown convert as an example of
performance marketing, because.
Anybody looking for a CRM Salesforce
is already on their radar.
Just like anybody looking
for a luxury handbag.
Louis Vuitton is on their radar.
Anybody looking for running
shoes, Nike is on their radar.
Like it just is.
You don't need that, but you are not them.
If like you ask yourself, is anybody,
everybody looking at the category?
No, me.
If not, then your Google ads
are actually really important.
Your.
Like direct response, social ads, your
Instagram, Facebook ads that literally
are not just some like brand thing,
but are literally telling you like,
there's a sale or go here, use this
discount code are really important.
And your SEO that's bottom of a
funnel becomes really important.
So that's, I think is regardless
of budget, you don't have the brand
awareness to ignore performance marketing.
Yeah.
But the other argument that I'll make is.
Performance marketing is to
some extent brand marketing.
And, and so like here, here's
what, here's one example.
I have a friend that
owns a t shirt company.
He, he advertises online,
his t shirt company.
People see his brand name.
That's like brand awareness.
You're growing, you're growing,
you're growing your brand.
So this idea of brand marketing
versus performance marketing
doesn't even make sense.
One, the more you spend on, on
brand awareness, like performance
marketing, people are considering ads.
So let's just say like Facebook ads,
Google ads, something like that.
The more times you show up in front
of the right audience, even paying
for that audience, even if you're
not, even if your main goal isn't just
strictly to drive conversions, the
more it's going to grow your brand.
And I can tell you a lot of these DTC
brands in the very beginning, that
is how they grew their brand was.
They just paid for.
Ad placements.
They, they, they were just trying to be
everywhere and they, they paid their way
in and then slowly grew a brand over time.
And I think that's very
true for most businesses.
Like most businesses aren't going to
have a separate line item budget just
to spend on brand marketing because
you need to be able to measure the
performance in the very beginning.
And then as you grow and you have
more money, you can do more creative
things and you can spend money on
things that aren't as measurable.
And so I just think this whole debate
around performance versus brand and
people saying, look, this, this Nike case
study or story shows the reason why you
shouldn't invest in performance marketing
and just focus on brand initiatives.
It doesn't make sense.
Look, I think Brandon brand and
performance are sort of one in the same
in terms of just spending that money.
And look, you need to do both.
And I think it's funny that like,
People in different functions,
obviously I get why they're fighting
for their own function, but just this
whole debate on one versus the other
just doesn't make any sense to me.
I think what would be an interesting
discussion is what, what do we think,
or what do you think companies at
various sizes, what, what would
the investment in brand look like?
I have my thoughts on this
because we know the investment in
programmatic like we've talked about
it in a bunch of other episodes.
You can read articles to grow and
convert dot com about the SEO side.
So like just to cover that, regardless
of your size, your size will probably
more just dictate budget on the what
is performance marketing look like,
but it's going to be like the usual
digital marketing channels, right?
Paid social, paid search, SEO, Um,
are being like the big ones, but
you also have like programmatic
advertising, which is sort of like
display or banner ads and et cetera.
So that's probably just going
to scale up and down and we can
talk about the nuances of that.
But more interesting that we don't
talk about in one of these episodes
that I think would be useful to talk
about now is let's take three tiers.
Tier one is really small companies.
We're talking about bootstrapped.
And I think we can talk about both like
a D two c, e-commerce Hypothetical and
a B2B, and then what I'm gonna call
like medium size, like SMB, maybe the m
which people define in different ways.
But let's just assume like millions
of dollars of revenue already, like
established sales, and then the enterprise
Nike, or maybe like less than Nike.
Um, what does brand marketing mean there?
I, I, I mean, I can go first to seed it.
For you, but to me, I think a big thing is
At the beginning beginning stages and let
me just do some contrasting for nike Brand
marketing means paying LeBron James untold
sums to wear Nikes and like be a Nike rep.
Or like, for example, Caitlin Clark
has taken over sort of WNBA and women's
basketball and has this famous thing
of her WNBA salary is 75, 000 a year.
Yes, really, or something on that
order, and then she signed an 8 year
contract with Nike for like 25 million.
Right.
To sort of explode that that's
an example of brand marketing.
I don't know the details of anything
else, brand marketing that Nike does,
but like, those are the things that are
like, you're capable of doing at that.
Level.
You can't do that when you're at
the other two levels, the midsize,
even one, you know, like a 30
million company, you cannot get
LeBron James or Serena Williams.
I don't think you go after people
that big for, I think, again, I think
it goes back to how commoditized
your product is versus not.
And I'll explain why in a little
bit, but let's, let's take like the
small DTC company, small DTC company.
Let's say you're making somewhere
between like one and 10 million a year.
Yeah.
You're not going to go after and sponsor
some large athlete, but you could go after
micro influencers that would basically
have a target audience of people that
would potentially buy from you, send
them product, uh, try to get them to post
that this is what a lot of companies do
just to get awareness in the early days.
for their target market.
Same thing.
If you're a sass company, you
could do the same thing here.
You could partner with influencers that
target the same audience that you do
try to get them to share your product.
Um, and do stuff like that.
You could also try to get your
story placed in news publications.
That's again on both sides.
I think for a DTC company.
I remember specifically, that's what
Allbirds did in the very beginning.
They have this story like an
advertorial or like an editorial
story posted on some tech publication
about why this was the next big shoe.
And that really blew up their
brand in the very beginning.
It's just getting a lot of press.
Uh, and same thing on the, The B to B
sauce side, you could do the same thing.
There's tons of companies that have
launched that way, had a story in
tech crunch or something like that
about what they're doing differently.
And that's that's helped grow
their brand in the very beginning.
And that's what I was
kind of calling tier two.
So a company that has some revenue,
you have some budget to be able
to even do micro influencers.
Here's my thought on tier one.
If you're like a smaller company
and you're like, man, like I
don't even have budget for that.
So you use whatever marketing budget
you have, you're using on that.
You know, performance marketing stuff.
Let's say you're doing
something like, like what we do.
And you're ranking for
high intent keywords.
Someone's looking for your, you know, I
don't know, like AI powered, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, software.
Um, and, and you're ranking for the
keyword of someone looking for that
software on the brand side, something
that's not in this LinkedIn discussion,
because it's about Nike and Nike has
been around for a million years and
has that you can do when you're tiny.
It's just your messaging.
Forget the influencers, forget the budgets
and the things outside of the site.
The first thing you should think about
when you think about, Oh, what are we
doing for our brand marketing site is
something you and I have talked about a
lot for years since we wrote our first
positioning article on our site is like,
what does your site say about your brand?
I would argue not to toot our own
horn in our tiny sliver of the
universe of content, marketing
strategy, blah, blah, blah.
We have a little bit of a brand, right?
We have not done any influencer marketing.
I mean, I guess you could
asterisk that like, sure.
We have been on other people's podcasts.
We have done some guest posts.
That's true, but it has not been an
intentional, uh, part of our strategy,
but where we focused a lot of our time is.
What are we saying on our own website?
We happen to use as a tool,
long form written articles.
You don't need to, if you're selling
a SAS tool, like, uh, you know, some,
let's say some new CRM to continue
the Salesforce example, you have
some CRM for dentists or some very
niche or specific thing or whatever.
There you, your brand investment should
start not with what other podcasts can
I get into, but kind of thinking through
the questions that Benji was asking
earlier, which is, are we commoditized?
And a lot of our SAS companies
and founders would argue, no, and
whether or not you debate with them.
If your feeling is no, no, like we
have this really strong stance on this
particular thing, like regular CRMs
and Salesforce don't work for dentists
and whatever offices or something.
And so you've created something
that's like specific to them.
That's good.
Your brand marketing has to start
first with like a message and
that message is conveyed first.
Like, does your website
convey that message?
And then, and then how
else do you get it out?
We happen to have a tactic
called disruption stories.
We've done a show on this and
a podcast episode on this.
We have stories on this, whatever,
but like you can do it in other ways.
Then you can go to guest posts, podcasts
or whatever, and micro influencers
or mega influence or whatever, and
your industry partners to get that
message across, but the first step
is getting that message there.
So you're, you're jumping ahead when you
look at a Nike, just like you were saying.
They've done that years ago, in the ages
of Phil Knight, of like, just do it.
They have this, when you think
Nike, what do you think of?
You think of like, athletics, and
performance, and Serena Williams,
and Michael Jordan, and LeBron James.
Like, that's what you think of.
Right?
You think like, if I'm serious, if
I'm going to be cool, like whether
it's just like fashion fitness shoes
to just like wear around sneaker
head culture or actual shoes.
Like Nike has this ethos of
like, we are one of the best.
That doesn't come on accident.
Yeah, no, I agree.
I think that that is one of the mistakes
that I see is people are trying to
grow their brand before they've really
defined who they are and what they do.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, like if you're starting off
from the very beginning, you have to
figure out what is the differentiator?
Like what, what is that statement?
So Nike's is just do it.
There's every, everyone has their own
unique statement, which basically is
their like value prop typically, or
it derives from their value prop or
like what they want to be known for.
And then they grow that.
But yeah, you're right.
That a lot of people just
don't, don't think about that.
So I think tactically to answer my own
question in a really pragmatic way, okay.
At that tier one early, early
stage companies, you don't
have millions in revenue.
Um, I think one thing you can do is say
like the boxes you should be checking to
do what we're advocating on this episode
of sort of, you can do both brand and
performance marketing are not antithetical
or, or mutually exclusive, rather,
they're obviously not antithetical, but
that they're not mutually exclusive.
You can do both at that tier one.
I think an example would be.
Step one, like box to check,
get your positioning, right?
What does our brand represent when
someone lands on our, and then I
think the best place to start where
you message that is the website.
Like, are we highlighting some
difference if we are commoditized on
features or whatever it, what is it?
Price?
Yeah, no, this is actually a very
good exercise and you're right.
So like when that earlier example,
when you said I'm some small DTC
brand or maybe some like Decently
sized you didn't see Brandon.
I want to model myself after
Birkin or Louis Vuitton Well,
like I would ask that company.
Okay, are you positioned
as a premium brand?
Like yeah, like that could be fine By the
way You could literally be like have some
really fine Italian leather From some town
or whatever and like you literally are one
of the best that's totally okay for sure.
But but I would say if you're not then
you're gonna run into problems trying
to copy what a premium brand is trying
to do because They're trying to separate
themselves from the commoditized companies
and saying like, look, we're better
in X, Y and Z way and we cost more.
And so the marketing tactics and the
strategies are going to be much different
for a company that's positioned as a
premium company versus someone who isn't
and who, who has a low price point.
And let me give us a few other examples.
We have, or both the girls rock
on work with other brands, for
example, that are, um, their brand
differentiator is a philanthropic or
charitable or like world good thing.
Then, then, then you just
need to get that straight.
That when people see your stuff
and I'm using your website as like.
The first place you can control it
that's like free, but that decision
on what your positioning is will apply
later to all of your advertisements
and what you say if you get featured on
podcasts or whatever, what you want the
influencers to say that you were so that
that positioning is the overall idea.
And the website is just one place.
The first easiest place to
control and get it right.
So the philanthropic or charitable
one was like, anytime someone is
exposed to our brand, we want them to
sort of think about our environmental
impact or our societal impact.
And like, you got to get that right.
You got to get the
messaging of that right.
And like, be really intentional about it
or moving to more B2B like software stuff.
A lot of our clients and all
our disruption story stuff is.
They often have a brand message
of this existing process is
broken and it's not working.
And it's a very like niche message
that only applies to people that
like know about their specific space.
Right.
And so our version of that is the
traditional top of funnel content.
Um, you know, strategy is broken and
you should be doing bottom of funnel.
And here's why.
And our brand also involves a lot
of data that when you read something
or listen to something from grow and
convert, we back it up with actual data.
Whereas everyone else just like talks
about it at a theoretical level.
So like you, you, you get that right.
And it can come in a lot
of different flavors.
Then you can, and then a practical
way is do one thing to try to get
the brand message across while you're
doing your direct response performance
marketing bottom of funnel stuff.
That's like a great place to start.
So for us, what we've advocated
before, but you don't have to do it
this way is from a content respect.
That's what we do is like.
We say, okay, we're going to go
after all of these bottom of funnel
keywords, which you can equate to the
SEO version of performance marketing.
And then we'll do one disruption story
that we spend hundreds of dollars a
month on ads, like social ads to like
constantly get people exposed to it.
We do that with ourselves.
Now we didn't use to back in the day when
we were growing, but now we have the means
to do it where we have our version of
disruption story, like a, you know, how
or why we started, you can find the link.
It's like up on the homepage of
our site, our like backstory.
And we continue to sort
of like drip ad budget.
It's not a huge amount to it, but
that's the place you can start.
And for a DTC brand, it could be a
few Instagram posts or something,
or like posts where you sort of
have a larger message around your.
food product or apparel
product or what have you.
Whether it's like the charitable message
or the health message or the something
is broken in the way we used to do it
message or just like a coolness message.
You know, you get a couple
influencers do like one thing.
In addition, it is like a good
place to start and then you
can scale as you get bigger.
What do you think about this
whole argument in the post
about the measurement thing?
Because as I say that the next question,
I think that I would ask if I was
listening to that is, okay, that's fine.
I can do that one brand type investment
or tactic marketing tactic, and then
I'll do the performance marketing stuff.
I can measure how many customers,
sales, demos, whatever, whatever.
Google ads brought in or the way we do
it our SEO brought in but then How do I
know whether to measure more on brand?
What do I do?
I think you should measure on brand That's
why like I don't understand where And this
is what I, I don't understand why people
think brand is not a measurable channel.
It for sure is.
So like, look, if you're, if you
were to put billboards all over
the city, that's technically
considered like brand marketing.
Yeah.
How would you measure that?
Yeah.
Like what we do on our forums.
We just ask how you heard about us
and people tell you how they heard.
Maybe it's from a friend.
Sure.
That can be considered brand.
Maybe it's from the billboard or
they saw an advertisement somewhere.
Sure.
They heard about you from someone that's
all considered brand and not, and you can
like use that information to determine
what's working and what's not working.
But this idea that you're just spending
money and that you should be okay with
spending money and there's no way to
measure what you're spending money on.
Like that's what I take issue with.
Like there's this whole culture
that's moving more towards the
just spend money and don't measure.
It's like, okay.
Like even brand activities, please.
You still need to measure if it's working.
You can't just dump hundreds of
thousands or millions of dollars
into pumping your name out there and
it has no effect on sales at all.
Like why would you keep doing that?
And that's, that's like the, there's
this like growing group of people
that are pushing this narrative.
And I just, that's, I
don't think it's true.
Just cause something's brand
doesn't mean it's not measurable.
And just cause something's performance
marking that also doesn't mean you're
going to be able to measure everything.
Like we've seen that count countless times
where we're, we're, yes, we're measuring
things, but it's not a perfect measure.
And so on that one, what Benji, well,
I don't know if this is what you were
referring to, but this is what you're
making me think of is on what we do there,
what's hard to measure and is imperfect is
actually something that kind of at least
irritates me or like makes me frustrated
is we could rank a client and Or we
rank, we routinely rank clients for some
bottom of funnel category keyword, best
CRM to continue that example, it software
running shoes for men or whatever.
And then someone sees it,
reads the article is like,
this is really interesting.
They're not ready for a
lot of our B2B clients.
Like it's a big decision.
They're not ready to request a demo.
Now they go talk to their boss
or their team or their coworker,
and then later when they decide
like, Oh yeah, let's do it.
What do they do?
They open up the homepage directly,
or maybe some other coworker does.
And then they type in the demo form.
How does that show up in the analytics
as a direct thing to the homepage?
How do most marketing teams perceive that?
Oh, the brand did it.
Someone just came to our homepage.
They just knew what other brand, if you
rank, that's what you were saying earlier.
If you rank for some bottom of
funnel thing is my specific example
to grow and convert, but like any
performance marketing, your ad.
It could be an ad on whatever platform
it could, it very well would likely
just increase people searching and
coming in, like as showing up in, in
GA as like direct to the homepage.
It's go, it's going to, cause you're
not going to be able to, someone
reads the article on their phone.
Cause they Googled
something on the subway.
Example of this is when, when people
spend money on non branded search,
what happens to their branded traffic?
Yeah.
It usually goes almost always goes up.
Yeah, and what happens the second
people stop paying for it for Google
ads their branded searches go down.
Why is that because There's a correlation
in it If more people are seeing your
ads and more people see your brand
name come across Then there's also more
people typing into Google your brand
name to learn more about what you do.
It's all related That's why I think
like this whole debate and just trying
to say one department is better than
the other This is what you should
spend money on over this You Because
of the story or just like even broader
like it just doesn't make sense.
It all goes together.
I think it's really companies need to
think about one the stage they're at to
how many how much resources they have
available like Companies have like limited
amount of cash or maybe a ton of cash
and that dictates what you spend money
on How commoditized they are what type
of industry you're in like there's so
many factors that weigh into you What
channels you should focus on when that's
why like, it's just a dumb debate to
even have because every single business
is going to need to make a different
decision based on where they're at.
I think, um, one other example
before we lose that train of
thought, I have seen clients try to
measure band in other clever ways.
One is geographically.
So there was a client that
did a lot of TV advertising.
And what they would do to test it is
they would increase spend or completely
remove spend from two different, I think
like zip codes or, or groups of zip codes
that were otherwise comparable in sales.
So if you're doing TV advertising
nationally, and you conclude that
this area around You know, like Tampa
Bay, Florida, sort of has historically
matched, um, sales with this place around
Tempe, Arizona or something like that.
And then you can just shut off ads on one
of them and see how sales do in general.
See how much traffic directly
to the homepage or whatever, um,
changes in those two geographies.
That's a really clever way to do it.
And you can also do that
with brand related online
advertising, digital marketing.
So if you're doing these kind of top
of funnel or brand based like meta
ads across Facebook, Instagram, or
what have you, that aren't as like
direct responsey or YouTube video ads,
you can also find two geographies if
you're a big enough brand to do it.
Um, and do it that way.
So yeah, there are ways to measure that.
And I think.
The other thing I wanted to mention
is like, you may be, if you're a real
sort of suspicious listener, you may be
thinking, Oh, just as Benji was pointing
out when he was showing people's posts,
look, this person is like a brand
marketer, of course, they're going to say
that you may be thinking that about us.
Of course, grow and convert is going to
say this, but actually, if you look at
our own marketing, I guess you can't,
but we can tell you because you don't
necessarily know what we've done.
Our own marketing.
In a lot of ways, I could argue we
grew mostly through kind of like
hard to measure brand advertising.
What we do for clients and
what we're known for is bottom
of funnel, pain point SEO.
But we didn't do that for ourselves until
the last two years or something like that.
Like, in other words, there was
four, five, six years or something
like that where we weren't
doing SEO content ourselves.
We were writing content, promoting
it in communities and just like
getting people to understand it,
that was like hard to attribute.
And what we know is that it was easy
for us because we only had that channel.
And so people would say, Oh, I've
read your content for three years.
And you're like, there you go.
And so we're very comfortable
operating in a space where we're
getting these imperfect signals.
So we add what Benji's referring to
is we ask in two places on our form.
If you fill out a form to work with
us, we ask, how did you hear about us?
We didn't use to, but also we asked
that at the beginning of our sales call,
every single call we say, let's just
start off just for our own education.
How did you hear about us?
That's very anecdotal.
We don't keep a log of it.
There's no like spreadsheet
that's like attribute a little
pie chart or something like that.
But we have a sense that people say
like, Oh, like a bunch of people
have been saying Twitter or something
this year or something like that.
Like, where's this like a bunch of people
have been just saying like, I Googled
it or a lot of people say like, A friend
told me, like I asked friends or I asked
an advisor and they told me like you
have to go check out Grow and Convert.
So we know that like long
term awareness is there.
I wanted to, to sort of highlight that.
That like, yeah, you can, you can
operate under these imperfect things.
Um, a couple other points before
we close that I wanted to mention.
A huge kind of logistical detail in
this post that's not equated for other
people is, um, Nike's wholesale business.
There's a lot of detail in this post.
We'll obviously put a link to the
LinkedIn post that started this
conversation in the show notes.
Um, so you can read it yourself about like
Nike sort of, uh, non investing or under
investing or pulling back on its partners,
like in other words, other retailers
that sell their shoes, department
stores, shoe stores, or whatever, to
me, like going back to just like the
post and people drawing conclusions
from it, that's like kind of silly.
I kept being like, Whoa,
that's a huge part of it.
Like if one of your major, or if not
majors channel is that you sell your
shoes through Everything from like
Macy's to I think you can buy Nike's
at like Costco and Foot Locker and
then you Pull a bunch of spend from it.
What do you think is gonna happen?
You know what I mean?
and so then my question to like
everyone else who's like reading these
LinkedIn posts and being like Oh, we
got to invest more in brand is like
do you sell at department stores?
Do you sell in the mall?
Are there like a million
other retailers globally?
I mean, I just know, like, the US
ones, like, I don't know, like,
there's like a million in Europe
or whatever that sell your product.
If not, I'm not sure this,
like, really applies to you.
If you sell all of your stuff off
of your website anyway, whether
you are D2C e commerce, whether
you are B2B SaaS, whatever.
Then like, then like it could be that this
25 billion a day was just because They
stopped offering deals or whatever to all
of their wholesalers like of course That's
like you have 40 years of selling through
stores and you like pull a bunch of spam
Like what do you think is gonna happen?
That's just like it's like a simple
explanation What is that Occam's razor?
Like the simplest explanation
is probably the obvious one.
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