Digital can build brand. Here's how.

This newsletter comes from the hosts of The Marketing Architects, a research-first show answering your biggest marketing questions. Find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts!

This week, we're joined by Kevin Goodwin, SVP of Strategy and Growth at New Engen. We're exploring how digital channels can build brand and why performance marketers need to rethink their approach to upper-funnel tactics. 

—Elena  

  

  

Digital marketers treat brand building too much like performance marketing.            

They run two-day tests. They spin up campaigns with 0.2% of their budget. They repurpose performance creative for reach campaigns. This approach fails to recognize the fundamental differences between what brand building and performance marketing are meant to achieve.  

 

Moving up the funnel requires change management                       

Kevin Goodwin's team at New Engen has cracked a code many digital marketers struggle with... Getting performance-minded brands to invest in brand building. 
Here's their approach: 

1. Start small and stair-step up. Don't ask brands to jump into the deep end. Make tiny changes first. For Meta advertisers, that might mean changing your attribution window from click-only to include view-through conversions. You'll reach a slightly bigger audience. You'll see slightly less attributable results, but you'll build comfort with the idea that not everything needs to be immediately trackable.
   
2. Challenge the platforms themselves. Meta has roughly 20 unique ad placements.  They vary wildly in quality, viewability and cost. The algorithm will optimize for whatever's cheapest when you let it run on autopilot. That's fine for performance. It's terrible for brand-building. You need to think deliberately about what placements actually drive quality reach.
   
3. Invest in sophisticated measurement. You can't move brands up the funnel without tying upper-funnel tactics back to business impact. Explore incrementality testing, media mix modeling, or even share of search tracking. Pick what works for your brand and make it part of your evergreen program.
   
4. Prepare for the death of the click. With AI overviews, agentic browsing and video taking over, clicks are becoming less relevant. This shift forces us to stop obsessing over last-click attribution and invest in better measurement methods.

Listen in on our discussion.

 

"Brand Building in the Platforms"     

Tom Roach's article pushes back against the idea that digital channels can't build brand. He argues that we're at an inflection point where major platforms are competing for brand budgets, and econometric evidence shows most digital channels now deliver both short- and long-term ROI. 

Read the article.

 

Take the shot on brand.          

“You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. " 

— Wayne Gretzkey