The formula for marketing success

Performance marketing is a digital advertising powerhouse, and for good reason. Marketers love its measurability, scalability, and immediate impact. Businesses love that it can deliver amazing results. But could an over-reliance on performance marketing actually hurt your brand in the long run?

Consider this: Spring is around the corner and your lawn care business has one goal: getting new clients through lead generation. You launch a Facebook lead campaign that explodes right out of the gate. A flood of forms comes in and excitement is high!

However, weeks pass and those leads start to dwindle. As you ponder why this is happening, you hear the siren song of hot Facebook leads calling back out to you. Why not allocate ALL the budget to lead generation? Let’s get those numbers back up, baby!

And yet, despite increased spending, your lead generation campaign stagnates. That initial flood is now a trickle. Now, you find yourself in a sticky situation. Your customers have dried up along with your budget.

We’ve seen it time and time again – the promise of instant results luring even the savviest businesses into murky waters by solely focusing on short-term performance metrics. This isn’t throwing shade on performance marketing. It has rightfully earned a top spot in many strategies, but on its own it is not built for sustainability. Eventually, like our example above, over-dependence on one channel or campaign can and usually does lead to growth plateaus.

Of course, we won’t end this story on a note of frustration and despair. We want to help your landscaping business thrive – not wither away. How do we fix this? By using a formula for marketing success that delivers short-term wins and long-term gains.

Understanding Performance Marketing and Awareness

• Performance marketing: Centers on delivering tangible, short-term results like clicks, leads, downloads, sales, or other clearly defined conversions. This is your Facebook lead campaign or your click to call. Campaigns are designed around these specific actions, which are tracked in real time. This allows for optimization and maximizing ROI.
• Brand awareness: Focuses on educating customers on the existence of your brand or product. It is a strategic approach used to raise visibility and attention. Awareness doesn’t have defined conversions but instead refers to how memorable or recognizable you are to your target consumers. Maybe you’re the lawn care place with the funny pun billboards. Or maybe you sponsor a local softball team and have your logo plastered all over the field. Brand awareness is raised in many ways and is not always tied to paid marketing.

For tips (we promise they’re good!) on how to improve your branding and awareness campaigns, check out our article here: Tips for branding and awareness campaigns.

Performance Marketing, Meet Awareness

Brand awareness fuels acquisition by creating familiarity and trust (because we are naturally drawn to brands we know, like, and trust), while successful customer acquisition generates buzz and expands brand visibility. The result? A powerful feedback loop, where each piece strengthens the other.

By investing in performance marketing and brand awareness, you’re not just chasing short-term wins. You’re building a brand that drives revenue, cultivates loyalty, and ultimately, creates a competitive advantage that sets you apart from Joe Schmoe’s lawn care service.

We’ve laid out the groundwork for you. Now it’s up to you (and your marketing partner) to put it into practice. Next time you’re thinking about marketing, consider the points below.

Amplify your brand voice

You know your brand better than anyone else. Don’t succumb to the pitfalls of AI-generated content that make you blend in (or worse, potentially turn off half your customers). Your brand identity should shine through every campaign and channel with consistent colors, logos, and voice. Find the spaces where your brand thrives, the places where your audience hangs out and continually build brand equity.

Allocate your budget wisely

Remember that part about performance marketing and branding working together? This can’t happen if 100% of your budget is spent on one or the other. Don’t just set your sights on conversions and treat your customers as a number. Instead, combine those conversion goals with branding to create stronger emotional connections with them. Develop and track both long-term and short-term goals for a more balanced approach.

Don’t just hard sell

At the end of the day, your business needs to make money. But, if you’re only focused on the hard sell, you’re not building loyalty. The brands that dominate aren’t the ones looking for 500 form fills by the end of the month – they’re the ones out there building the strongest connections with their customers.

Performance marketing has its time and place, but it should never be your entire strategy. Don’t get swept away by the allure of immediate results. These short-term wins can distract you from building a strong brand foundation, leaving you marooned when customers dry up. Performance marketing, when paired with awareness, delivers the best of both worlds: short-term wins and long-term gains.