Tanner SmithCEO Syndicate Marketing | Scaling 7, 8, & 9 figure businesses | Performance marketing for ecom, local, and info businesses

STOP INVESTING IN YOUR BRAND!

10 Nov 2023 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the speaker from Syndicate Marketing argues against heavy investment in top‑of‑funnel branding. He defines branding narrowly as a means to acquire and satisfy customers, then contends that brand‑awareness campaigns are largely guesswork with no direct, measurable return. The speaker explains that his agency focuses on performance marketing, delivering monthly ROI‑driven results, and therefore does not specialize in SEO or brand work. While acknowledging SEO’s importance, he notes that mixing SEO with performance work would dilute the agency’s ability to prove value. He warns business owners that continual spending on branding can create a financial hole, as the costs recur without tangible outcomes.

Chapters

I'm not a big fan of the whole buzzword branding. Branding should be, how do I get customers? How do I fulfill customers? That's it. That's it. One of the reasons why we at Syndicate Marketing don't really, not that I don't believe in SEO, it's super important, it's super valuable, but why we don't specialize in it, because as performance marketers, if a business owner is spending money with us every single month, we're trying to generate a return for them and prove our worth to a business owner, then we can't really contribute back our SEO and performance. And same thing goes with branding, right? Top of funnel brand building, brand awareness campaigns are tough, 'Cause you're really playing guesswork. You might have a marketing company currently telling you that it's a good idea to invest in your branding, right? And you might be just trusting the experts. Yeah. And the challenge is, is then you go and you invest month 1, month 2, month 3, month 4, then you have to try to dig yourself out of this hole because you keep paying money every single month without seeing direct tangible return.