The Performance Branding Framework

The Performance Branding Framework

The Core Idea Behind the Framework

The core idea behind the Performance Branding Framework is that the success of marketing must always be viewed in comparison to the competition. Marketing emerged from the idea of securing a competitive advantage through better promotion. Many marketers today have forgotten this aspect of marketing.

Marketing is competition

We believe that if you effectively only do the same thing as the competition in a different color, you've already lost.

We believe "more" is not the solution.

We believe 80% of advertising is inefficient and we see our task as identifying and implementing the effective 20%.

We believe marketing is not an end in itself, but the purpose is always to gain a competitive advantage.

We have therefore looked for ways to support ourselves and our clients in using available resources as effectively as possible. Our Performance Branding Framework emerged from this aspiration.

The framework categorizes all possible marketing measures into "Digital Basics" and "Digital Advantages".

Digital Basics: The Low-Hanging Fruit

The Digital Basics ensure that marketing can actually contribute to business goals. By "Digital Basics" we mean measures that companies must absolutely cover to avoid a significant competitive disadvantage. They are the "quick wins" that achieve a comparatively large positive effect with manageable resource investment.

These basics include, regardless of industry, an appealing website that provides relevant information for potential customers and applicants in an attractive form. Also included is the setup of user profiles on all relevant social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube) that secures the username, provides the most important information, and links to the website.

Depending on the industry, additional basics may be added. In industries such as tourism and hospitality, for example, a continuously updated Instagram profile is essential, as users often search there for current information.

Digital Advantages: The Optimal Use of Limited Resources

All marketing measures that do not fall into the Digital Basics belong to the "Digital Advantages" area. While the Digital Basics represent MUST measures, measures from the "Digital Advantage" area belong to the CAN category, which must always be viewed from the perspective of limited resources (time, money, personnel, know-how).

Digital Advantage measures are effective. Every measure and strategy must directly contribute to business goals. For us, it doesn't matter whether "everyone does it that way" or it's on the trend list of the year. Marketing is not an end in itself.

Digital Advantage measures are efficient. Only measures and strategies are considered where we are either one step ahead of the competition and can therefore achieve better results more cheaply, or where we have a clear advantage in implementation compared to the competition.

We divide marketing measures into four quadrants:

Undervalued Attention (Top Left)

Marketing measures with undervalued attention are measures that are only implemented by a few companies, but offer the opportunity to relatively easily achieve a positive return on investment (ROI). What's special about these measures is that they are not implemented by your competitors and you therefore have the chance to exploit their ignorance and hesitation.

Your competition's inactivity means that you have less competition in the battle for your target audience's attention and that the implementation of marketing measures doesn't have to be perfect to achieve a high impact. It just needs to be "good enough" to resonate with your target audience.

Think, for example, of the early years of Facebook or Instagram, when you could reach hundreds of thousands of people with your messages without having to invest a single euro in advertising spend.

Currently, Social SEO is an example that falls into this category. Only a few companies use a Social SEO strategy to be found on Instagram, TikTok and Co. for relevant search queries.

Correctly Priced Attention (Top Right)

Unfortunately, new, effective marketing measures don't remain undiscovered forever. Sooner or later, the competition recognizes their potential and begins to incorporate the new measures into their own marketing mix. Eventually, a point is reached where supply and demand are in balance and the price for the marketing measure more or less corresponds to the value generated by the measure.

Marketing measures with correctly priced attention are therefore measures that are implemented by many companies, but despite the high competition can still offer a positive return on investment.

However, the high competition means that you must be better at implementation than the competition.

A good example of this is Search Engine Advertising (SEA). When Google Ads was introduced, companies could occupy relevant keywords for a few cents per click. Today, the same keywords cost over 100 EUR per click in some industries.

Another example is Instagram advertising. Instagram is the channel with the greatest reach among young and middle-aged target groups and has a very, very good advertising system. But the competition knows just as well that Instagram exists, so Instagram is now the standard channel that every marketer thinks about when planning a social media campaign.

Nevertheless, it is possible to achieve a positive ROI with these measures if you are better at implementation than your competition.

Overvalued Attention (Bottom Right)

Eventually the pendulum swings over and marketing measures that were once effective have largely lost their impact. Nevertheless, it often takes a while for marketers to notice this.

Marketing measures with overvalued attention are measures that are (still) implemented by many companies, even though they no longer have a chance of achieving a positive ROI. These are measures you should definitely avoid, because your resources would be much better placed in the top two quadrants.

One reason marketers often hold on to unnecessary measures is because they have the false assumption that the measures are important and a pure implementation of the basics would not be sufficient.

A typical example of this is the attempt to build a Facebook page organically. While efficient management of Facebook pages with a high number of existing fans can still make sense today to keep the page active for advertising purposes, it is not recommended to build Facebook fans organically nowadays.

Nevertheless, there are a multitude of companies that are not satisfied with simply creating a new Facebook page and 1-2 posts that contain the most important information and link to the website, but instead try to build the page organically.

You should definitely avoid this mistake.

Good That Nobody Does That (Bottom Left)

Finally, there are marketing measures that obviously make no sense and are therefore only carried out by a few companies. They are obviously a waste of time and resources and it's good that hardly anyone bothers with them.