Brand is a performance lever
How qualitative research, message testing, and strategic activation make paid media work better — and why most performance teams miss the point
Editor’s note: This is the execution layer of our Brand vs. brand philosophy.P.S We are hosting a happy hour (SPOTS LIMITED) in San Fransicso during Inbound with other B2B Marketers. Please register here if you are interested. We hosted one in Boston last year, & It was a great night. (SORRY THIS IS AT CAPACITY)
A few of of are at Inbound this week, if you are around, come say hello
We spent $15,000 last month, of our own money, not on media, not on creative production, and not on more leads.
We spent it on understanding.
Message tests. Brand recall surveys. Buyer interviews. The kind of work most performance agencies avoid, not because it isn’t valuable, but because it doesn’t show up neatly in a dashboard. You can’t A/B test your way to relevance if the underlying message doesn’t resonate. You can’t optimize your way out of obscurity if buyers don’t even remember your name.
At most agencies, that’s considered “brand” work — a fuzzy line item, often pushed aside in favour of lead volume or lower CPLs.
But here, we see it differently.
We treat message clarity and brand recall the same way we treat cost per lead or conversion rate — as levers to be measured, refined, and scaled. Not because we’re sentimental about good writing or clever taglines, but because you cannot build a pipeline off a message that your buyers forget the moment they scroll past it.
The illusion of performance problems
Campaigns stall for all sorts of reasons. The CTR dips. The CPL creeps up. Sales starts to complain about lead quality. On the surface, it looks like a media problem. The natural instinct is to tweak bids, adjust targeting, try new ad formats, or shift budgets around.
But more often than not, the real issue is upstream.
It’s not that the campaign isn’t working.
It’s that no one understands what you do, or remembers you after the first touch.
We’ve seen this time and again: performance issues that aren’t actually performance issues. They’re messaging issues. Positioning issues. Confusion issues.
You can’t scale a funnel built on a fuzzy story. And yet, most teams do exactly that. Then they wonder why their metrics are stuck.
The test that told us everything
Earlier this year, we ran a brand survey for a B2B company in the employee experience space. The team had been running LinkedIn and Google campaigns for months. Traffic was fine. CTR was stable. But conversions were lagging, and the brand wasn’t showing up in sales conversations.
So we asked their audience directly.
Over 200 decision-makers, all in the ICP. Full-time professionals, mid-to-large companies, roles in HR and IT.
Here’s what we found:
0% unaided recall.
Just 18% aided awareness.
Nearly half had never heard of the brand.
Of those who had, most couldn’t explain what they did or how they were different.
We layered this with qualitative feedback from a homepage message test.
“Still don’t know what this does.”
“Feels like buzzwords.”
“What is ‘organizational velocity’? Why should I care?”
The team had great visuals, a sleek product, and paid media running. But it wasn’t sticking. Not because of media performance, but because the message lacked clarity.
You can’t scale confusion
When messaging is unclear, everything else becomes expensive.
Your ads have to work harder. Your sales cycle gets longer. Buyers bounce before they get the value. And attribution gets noisy because even the good traffic doesn’t convert.
This is why we ask:
What brands come to mind in this space?
What problem do you think they solve?
What makes them different?
What do you remember, if anything?
These aren’t fluffy brand questions. They’re conversion diagnostics.
When unaided recall is low, the pipeline gets leaky. When value prop comprehension is weak, CAC spikes. When you sound like everyone else, the buyer picks the loudest brand, not the best one.
The two sins: no brand vs. no activation
We were customers of a major HR tech platform. It worked well enough.
But over time, we started seeing content from a competitor. We saw the founder speak. Read their LinkedIn posts. Watched short clips explaining their POV. The message stuck.
So when they eventually reached out? We switched.
No nurture required. No drawn-out pitch. Just a familiar brand, offering a better fit.
The brand work had already been done. The outbound just closed the loop.
This is the first sin: trying to activate demand without building memory. Every touch is cold. Every deal takes longer. CAC climbs. It’s a grind.
But the second sin is just as bad: building awareness with no intent to convert. You warm the market with thought leadership, podcasts, and content, then sit back and wait.
While your competitor makes the call.
We’ve seen both sides. Which is why we say:
Brand without activation is arts & crafts.
Activation without brand is a grind.
You need both.
The 5% myth (and why timing matters)
Everyone loves to quote it:
“Only 5% of your market is in buying mode at any given time.”
And in many categories, that’s true.
But when we ran a brand survey for a client in the IT and operations space, the results told a very different story:
79% were actively buying or planning to.
56% planned to purchase in the next 90 days.
This wasn’t a drip. It was a flood.
But here’s the catch: just because the market is in motion doesn’t mean they remember you. And if they don’t, they won’t buy from you.
Awareness isn’t enough. You need relevant awareness. Timed. Specific. Memorable.
What buyers actually said
Across message tests for three different B2B brands in the last quarter, the feedback was almost identical:
“What is this?”
“Too vague.”
“Feels like it’s written for investors.”
“Why should I care?”
“Still don’t know what this does.”
This isn’t a design problem. It’s not a copy problem.
It’s a clarity problem.
And once we fixed that, restructured the landing page, swapped jargon for plain language, brought in specific proof — everything downstream improved. Better engagement. More demos. Lower CPL.
Same product. Same budget. Different outcome.
Insight → Message → Media
We used to follow the classic order:
Launch media. Get leads. Adjust if things break.
Now we flip it:
Insight → Ask questions. Run surveys. Watch what buyers say.
Message → Shape your positioning around what they actually care about.
Media → Spend behind the story that’s proven to resonate.
This approach doesn’t just improve performance. It builds confidence.
Confidence that your funnel isn’t leaking because of a misunderstanding. Confidence that your ads will convert, not because they’re clever, but because they’re clear.
The cost of invisibility
One brand we worked with had all the signs of a category leader.
World-class team
Big-name logos
Backed by strong investors
But after six months of active campaigns, they ran a recall survey.
0% unaided.
Even when prompted, most couldn’t describe what the company did. But their competitors? Recalled easily. Understood clearly. Chosen more often.
That’s the cost of invisibility.
Buyers don’t always pick the best product.
They pick the one they remember.
Brand recall is a performance metric
We don’t treat brand work as separate from performance.
We treat it as the foundation.
Because if your message doesn’t stick, your funnel will stall. If your story is unclear, your spend becomes inefficient. If your name doesn’t come up in the right moments, someone else wins by default.
That’s why we spend money on message tests.
That’s why we ask buyers what they remember.
That’s why we pair brand and activation like they’re two parts of the same machine.
Performance starts before the click.
It starts with a moment of recognition.
And that’s what brand recall really is.
Not a nice-to-have.
Not a soft metric.
A lever.
And one worth pulling.
Why this matters now (and why we’re different)
This isn’t theory. It’s how we operate.
In one recent project, we identified the top competitors in the space and launched campaigns to position our client directly against them. Not vaguely. Not aspirationally. But head-to-head. Because the brand recall data told us buyers didn’t know how to choose, and we saw that as an opportunity to shape the category.
In another, we realized that while prospects recognized the brand name, they didn’t know what the company did. Awareness was high. Clarity was low. So we launched a top-of-funnel campaign explicitly designed to say: here’s who we are, what we do, and who we do it for.
In a third case, the brand survey showed us something hard to see from inside: we had been over-investing in bottom-of-funnel campaigns. Demo CTAs, sales outreach, retargeting. But buyers weren’t ready. Not because of intent, but because they didn’t remember the brand. So we reallocated the budget to early-stage campaigns to fix the front of the funnel.
And in every case, we took what we heard from real buyers and fed it straight back into the work. The homepage copy was rewritten. Ads were refocused. Personas were sharpened.
Brand recall wasn’t a PowerPoint. It was an operating input.
Most demand agencies start with the media plan.
We start with the message.
Where others chase leads, we look upstream.
Where others separate brand and performance, we merge them into a single system.
Where others deliver impressions, we aim for memory.
We believe that the brand is not a cost center. It’s a performance layer.
That’s why we invest in message testing.
Why we run brand recall surveys.
Why we help clients define a narrative that sticks.
Not because we’re trying to win creative awards.
But because we want your campaigns to work better.
To close faster. To scale with less waste. To convert more efficiently.
If you’re tired of watching good ads fail because the message is fuzzy, you’re not alone.
If your brand shows up in front of the right people, but they don’t remember what you do, that’s fixable.
And if you’re trying to build a pipeline in a competitive market without being memorable, that’s a solvable problem.
This is what we do.
We’re not just a performance agency.
We’re the demand partner that starts with first principles.
That treats brand as infrastructure.
And builds every campaign from a foundation of clarity, resonance, and recall.