Solving the Brand vs. Performance Debate for Unified B2B Marketing

TL;DR: Stop debating brand vs. performance. The winning strategy is to combine emotional, attention-grabbing brand creative with functional, conversion-focused performance marketing, and then prove its value using business outcomes, not vanity metrics.

The LinkedIn debates are endless. 

"Focus on performance; brand is fluff." "Performance is a race to the bottom; only brand builds value."

According to Brandon Rhoten, the CMO of GroundTruth, the whole "brand vs. performance" war is a tired, binary argument that misses the point entirely.

Instead of choosing a side, B2B marketers need to be creating a seamless, full-funnel machine where brand and performance are two parts of the same engine. 

Drawing from his experience in marketing fast food, where success is measured in daily foot traffic, Brandon offers a refreshingly unique playbook that B2B marketers can, and should, steal. 

Keep reading for the summary or listen to the entire conversation here. 

How to Combine Emotional Brand Creative with Functional Performance Tactics

In the restaurant world, the goal is simple: get hungry people through the door. 

Some brands try to do this with brand power, think McDonald's. While others focus purely on bottom-funnel tactics like coupons and search ads.

The brands that consistently win, Brandon says, are the ones that do both.

The magic formula is a clean combination of those two things, it's not just about the brand. It's not just about performance. It's about the recipe that leads to conversion.

He breaks down the recipe into two distinct but connected parts:

Top of Funnel Should Focus on Brand

• Goal: To make people know you and, more importantly, care about you. This is the emotional layer.

• Creative: This isn’t the place for a dry feature list. It’s about differentiation. Brandon cites the fast-growing Dave's Hot Chicken, which uses 3D billboards and drone shows to grab attention. The key is to express what makes you different and interesting. 

• Media: The aim is broad reach to your specific target audience. Think CTV, streaming audio, and digital out-of-home ads that can be targeted geographically and behaviorally.
  

Bottom of Funnel should focus on Performance

• Goal: To convert the interest you've built into action. This is the functional layer.

• Creative: The messaging becomes direct and utilitarian. It answers the question, why now? This could be an offer, a product highlight, or a location-based prompt.

• Media: This is the realm of Search Engine Marketing, targeted mobile ads during crucial decision-making windows (like 30 minutes before lunchtime), and CRM emails. You want to be there in the exact moment a decision is being made.

The two must be connected. The consumer who saw the cool, emotional brand ad on CTV is the same person who gets the functional, location-aware mobile ad on their phone as they’re deciding on lunch.

Why Your B2B Creative Needs an Emotional Hook

Brandon is quick to dismiss the notion that these rules only apply to B2C, pointing to his own work at GroundTruth.

The company's current top-of-funnel campaign features Oscar Nunez (the accountant from The Office) playing a CFO who complains to a marketer about ‘marketing math’, vanity metrics like likes and shares. The ad is relatable to any marketer who's had to justify their budget, and grabs attention with a familiar face. 

It's a B2C tactic used to solve a B2B problem.

Once a viewer engages with that ad, they’re pulled into a lower-funnel experience that showcases specific products. This is the functional push. The sales cycle is longer, but the structure is identical.

The reality of B2B is that a purchase decision often involves multiple stakeholders. Brandon notes that the average deal has around seven stakeholders, and your funnel needs to account for this.

For more on treating your B2B like a B2C check out this conversation with Robin Daniels from Zensai. 

How to Justify Your Marketing Budget to the C-Suite

Perhaps Brandon's most urgent piece of advice is for marketers to change the way they communicate internally.

As soon as you get outside of anybody with marketing in their title, you stop talking about marketing, don't ever say that ever again.

Your CEO, your CFO, and your board do not care about your cost-per-click , your click-through rates, or the number of likes you got. They care about business outcomes. 

Brandon insists that marketers must start with the metrics the business values (like foot traffic, customer acquisition, check growth, or qualified leads) and work backward to show how their activities drive those results.

When you can connect your marketing efforts directly to business outcomes, you transform your department’s perception. 

Marketing is no longer an expense; it’s an investment in revenue growth, and investments get bigger budgets.

Conclusion

By building a unified funnel that captures attention emotionally and converts it functionally, B2B marketers can create a more efficient and effective growth machine. 

But the work doesn’t stop there. The final, crucial step is to translate that success into the language of the C-suite. 

When you can prove that your marketing is not just creating engagement but is directly driving revenue and business outcomes, you fundamentally change the conversation.

About the Speaker

Brandon Rhoten is the CMO at GroundTruth, a leading location-based marketing and ad-tech platform. With a career spanning both B2B and B2C, he brings a unique perspective on what drives consumer behavior. His philosophy is encapsulated in the name of his LLC: Boring Kills Brands.