A four-step guide to the Brandformance journey
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- Brandformance integrates brand building and performance marketing across the full funnel, ensuring balance between efficiency and effectiveness.
- There are four practical steps you can take to start your journey: diagnose your positioning, identify distinctive assets, expand beyond small-screen media placements, and measure your brand equity.
- Going through these steps will help to shift your clients or your own brand from a purely performance mindset to one that integrates brand across the funnel (to better results).
Performance-heavy e-commerce brands often attribute growth and efficiency issues to performance marketing alone.
The symptoms—volatile results, declining audience effectiveness, and stagnant scale—lead to endless cycles of tweaking creative, targeting, and account structures. But the underlying challenge isn’t necessarily performance. It’s a lack of balance between efficiency and effectiveness: focusing solely on in-market, ready-to-buy audiences while neglecting Future Demand and long-term brand growth.
"Brandformance" bridges this gap. It integrates brand-building and performance marketing across the full funnel—top (TOF), middle (MOF), and bottom (BOF)—unlocking sustainable growth. At Alpha, opens in new tab, we guide our clients through this evolution with practical, low-risk steps. Here’s how.
1. Diagnose your positioning with Tracksuit
Example: We recently ran a workshop for a global fashion e-comm client targeting ambitious FY26 goals. Reviewing the Tracksuit dashboard revealed a gap between intended and actual positioning: the brand wanted to be known for quality capsule wardrobes, but consumers associated it with style and comfort.
Our process:
🔹 Reviewed 12 months of video assets to audit actual messaging.
🔹 Assessed view times and frequency to ensure messages landed.
🔹 Developed new creative and messaging to reinforce desired positioning—across all funnel stages, not just TOF.
Insight: With Tracksuit, we can quickly validate whether the brand story is clear, then use Brandformance to reinforce that narrative at every touchpoint.
2. Distinctiveness drives efficiency
Example: In the premium swimwear category, we benchmarked a client's ads against competitors using Meta Ad Library. Stripped of branding, even target consumers struggled to attribute ads correctly—everything looked the same.
Our approach:
🔹 Ran a creative workshop to identify unique brand assets and executions.
🔹 Enhanced creative distinctiveness to increase cut-through and maximise media ROI.
🔹 Collaborated with audio partners on sonic branding, leveraging sound for memorability as digital content shifts to sound-on formats.
Tip: AI tools can help analyse creative distinctiveness if internal resources are limited.
3. Expand beyond the small screen—cost-effectively
Example: A traditional FMCG client wanted mass reach but wasn’t ready for prime-time TV. Instead, we bought digital OOH programmatically near key supermarkets, geo-fenced at state level.
How we measure impact:
🔹 Track brand awareness changes by location.
🔹 Analyse funnel progression to identify which touchpoints drove lift based on a benchmark.
Key point: Digital OOH, audio, and CTV are accessible with starting budgets as low as $5k. While these formats may not drive immediate conversions, they’re a cost-effective way to begin telling your brand story and building equity—core to Brandformance.
4. Use pricing insights to measure brand equity
Example: Using Google Merchant Next, we analysed a premium hiking client’s pricing relative to competitors. Despite higher prices, premium products sold well—confirming strong brand equity.
Our method:
🔹 Cross-referenced pricing data with performance metrics.
🔹 Monitor brand perception and ensure narrative consistency using a tool like Tracksuit.
Outcome: Strong brand equity (built through integrated Brandformance) sustained premium pricing, reduced reliance on discounts, and lowered cost per acquisition at the BOF.
Brandformance is based on unity, not silos
Shifting e-comm clients from a pure performance mindset to Brandformance is an incremental journey. At Alpha, we focus on:
🔹 Consistently monitoring and refining brand messaging across all funnel stages.
🔹 Using a brand tracking platform like Tracksuit and complementary tools to identify opportunities and measure impact.
🔹 Taking small, practical steps—such as distinctive creative, programmatic OOH, and pricing analysis—to build confidence and deliver results.
If you’re unsure what your brand narrative is, workshop it with your client to ensure total alignment. Start integrating your brand story today. True growth comes from a unified approach where brand and performance work together—not in silos.
This guest post was contributed by Alpha Digital Head of Paid Media Mateusz Kardas.
