Marketing is in a performance trap.
For too long, we’ve been obsessed with short-term wins. Brands have prioritised what’s easily measurable: clicks, conversions, return on ad spend (ROAS). But while these tactics give immediate gratification, they come at the expense of long-term brand health, putting companies into what WARC calls the “doom loop.” This cycle leads to shrinking brand equity, diminishing returns, and unsustainable growth.
The Doom Loop: Why Short-Term Thinking Holds Brands Back
The WARC “Multiplier Effect” study shines a light on a critical issue. Short-term performance marketing is the immediate go-to for many brands, and its measurable impact is enticing. But this obsession with performance-driven marketing, which focuses on the lower-funnel metrics like conversions and sales, is undermining longer-term brand-building efforts.
In simple terms: focusing solely on what’s measurable now leads to declining brand health and unsustainable marketing strategies.
Brands get stuck in this cycle because of traditional thinking: focus on what’s easy to measure, optimise for clicks and conversions, and ignore the less tangible aspects like brand loyalty, awareness, and long-term growth.
But the problem isn’t just in the media mix. It’s a measurement problem.
Fixing the Cycle: How Smarter Measurement Can Unlock Sustainable Growth
To break free from the doom loop, marketers need to rethink their approach to measurement. It’s not just about proving value after the fact — it’s about using measurement as a tool for smarter strategy from the start.
Here’s the kicker: We don’t need to ditch performance marketing altogether. We don’t need to drastically swing the pendulum back to brand-building alone. Instead, we need innovative marketing measurement to guide both performance and brand investments effectively.
The Full-Funnel Rebalance: Why It’s Time to Rethink Marketing Budgets
Performance marketing has been the darling of CMOs for over a decade. Its measurable impact makes it easy to justify spend, especially when you’re trying to hit aggressive growth targets. But here’s the reality check: focusing solely on the lower funnel has meant that upper-funnel marketing (like brand-building initiatives) has been left underfunded.
Many marketers are waking up to the fact that short-term results come at the cost of long-term brand equity. This realisation is prompting a shift back towards upper-funnel activities — but doing so in a way that uses modern marketing measurement techniques.
It’s time to rebalance the marketing funnel, and measurement is the tool to do it.
Why Measurement Is the Key to Unlocking Sustainable Marketing Success
The problem with most marketing strategies today is that brand and performance teams often operate in silos. These teams work with different goals, KPIs, and metrics, which leads to conflicting priorities. While performance marketing focuses on clicks and conversions, brand marketing focuses on building awareness and loyalty — neither of which show up in the same dashboards.
This split creates false trade-offs, where brand investment becomes seen as a “nice-to-have” instead of a necessary driver of growth. The result? Short-term efficiency wins at the cost of long-term value.
But here’s the good news: Measurement can change this dynamic.
Smarter measurement is the glue that connects brand and performance, unifying efforts across the full customer journey. It’s not just about tracking clicks and conversions. It’s about connecting the dots between awareness, consideration, intent, and ultimately, conversion — creating a clear path to both short- and long-term growth.
Breaking the Doom Loop: Steps to Build an Accountable Full-Funnel Strategy
To truly escape the doom loop, marketers must take a holistic approach to marketing measurement.
Here are the key steps to building a more accountable full-funnel strategy:
-
Eliminate silos between brand and performance teams
Unifying brand and performance teams around common goals is critical. Shared KPIs should not just focus on clicks and conversions but also incremental growth across the funnel, customer loyalty, and brand affinity.
Cross-functional teams that align on shared objectives will ensure your strategy is more agile and growth-focused. -
Invest in holistic measurement
Combine different tools and data sources to capture the full impact of marketing efforts. Here’s how:-
Media Mix Modeling (MMM) is essential to understanding the long-term effects of brand media. It can help connect first-party data and brand-building campaigns to actual business outcomes like new customer acquisition and overall brand growth.
-
Incrementality testing (e.g., geo-matched markets, audience holdouts) isolates the impact of brand campaigns on things like traffic and conversions, helping you see their downstream effect.
-
Brand lift studies gauge changes in awareness, consideration, and intent. When combined with behavioural data like search volume and social engagement, these insights create a 360-degree view of brand performance.
-
-
Make data actionable and speed it up
Many marketers treat analytics as a post-campaign report card, but data should drive strategy, not just evaluation. Real-time data, powered by AI and advanced data platforms, helps marketers optimise campaigns and pivot based on live feedback.By treating measurement as a strategy driver, you’ll stay agile and optimise campaigns quickly — without waiting for quarterly reviews. This allows you to adjust mid-campaign and scale what’s working.
What Does Great Measurement Look Like?
When brands get measurement right, they not only improve short-term performance but also drive long-term growth. Take a look at these examples:
-
A retailer launched an upper-funnel campaign targeting new audiences. Using MMM and holdout testing, they saw incremental traffic and conversions, revealing that the cost of acquiring new customers through brand media was actually lower than with many lower-funnel channels.
-
A global brand used brand lift studies and share of search to validate awareness gains from a CTV campaign. They saw improved performance in paid search and retargeting shortly after, demonstrating the halo effect of brand media.
These examples show that brand investment drives real growth when paired with smarter measurement.
The Road to Real Growth: Measuring What Matters
The road out of the doom loop isn’t about abandoning performance marketing or swinging the pendulum too far. Instead, we need to evolve how we define and measure performance.
-
Expand your definition of performance to include brand outcomes.
-
Create measurement systems that reflect how people make decisions, not just what they click.
-
Integrate measurement into strategy from the start, so it informs every stage of the customer journey.
Marketing today requires both accountability and ambition. Those who get smarter about measurement will thrive in an era where both brand-building and performance are vital.
Photo credit: NPWS
