2025: The year of brand building

“We’re good at performance marketing, but our brand sucks!”

As marketers get ready for the ‘2025 brand building revolution’, even the biggest brands are realising that the time has come to refocus on brand marketing, as all trends point to budgets moving away from ‘short-termism’ strategies in 2025.

Kirsty Ostell, Managing Director of O.agency, gathered 120 marketing leaders from across the UK to ask how they were feeling about performance marketing, and these were the results:

• 65 per cent are struggling to see clear business results from performance marketing, and find it difficult to get beyond the vanity metrics to the real business impact.
• 70 per cent are planning to invest more in brand marketing in 2025 after a period of increased investment into performance marketing over the last 24 months.
• 83 per cent felt ROI on performance marketing was getting harder to justify due to digital changes and the increasing costs of performance marketing.

While performance marketing can drive those immediate results, if it doesn’t align with a strong brand story, are marketers really growing their business long term?

Brands that master the balance between performance and brand building are the ones set up for success. Not least because the digital environment in 2025 and beyond presents a unique set of challenges: rising customer acquisition costs, stricter privacy regulations, and changing consumer expectations around trust and authenticity. Relying solely on ‘short-term tactics’ is not just risky, it’s unsustainable and creates a significant disadvantage for businesses.

The Digital Shift: What’s in and what’s out for 2025

Over the past few years, performance marketing which focused on driving measurable, short-term actions like clicks, leads and conversions has been the focus of many companies’ strategies. But this emphasis on performance marketing is becoming harder to sustain on its own due to:

Privacy regulations

Changes like GDPR and the phasing out of third-party cookies are making it more difficult to track and target consumers across platforms. The reduced ability to collect data is affecting the precision of performance tactics, making it more expensive and much less effective. With higher customer acquisition costs, brands need to rethink their approach.

Rising costs

O.agency’s research with senior marketers revealed that 70 per cent feel ROI is getting harder to justify due to digital changes and rising costs of performance marketing. While it’s still necessary and valuable, it is becoming less efficient on its own. Many brands are stuck focusing on easily measurable vanity metrics, clicks, likes, and shares, but these metrics don’t translate into long-term business success. Platforms like Google Ads, Meta and TikTok have become highly competitive, driving up the cost of performance marketing campaigns by up to 70 per cent. Many brands find it increasingly difficult to justify ROI, especially when the vanity metrics don’t translate into sustainable business results.

Changing consumer preference and expectation

Consumers are becoming more immune and less interested in transactional advertising. They are savvy and can see through the performance hype, instead they are gravitating towards brands that have an emotional connection, where they feel content is authentic and believable. Consumers are more likely to engage with a brand they trust, and they are willing to pay a premium for products or services that align with their values and deliver consistent experiences. This emotional connection drives repeat business, customer retention, and word-of-mouth referrals, outcomes that performance marketing alone can’t achieve.

The need for integration: why both matter

There are plenty of brands leading the way by successfully balancing performance and brand, but they all have one thing in common, their marketing is filled with the big ideas and brand led content that performs in the earned space first. These brands demonstrate the power of getting it right, they are some of the pro’s when it comes to integrated strategies. So, let’s embrace four marketing mantras for 2025:

• Brand building drives loyalty
• Performance marketing drives conversions
• Every idea should perform in the earned space first
• Proper data = business success

As marketers head into 2025, it’s time to think differently, use budgets wisely and get back to a time where audiences are genuinely surprised and inspired and not ‘transacted with’. The marketing landscape is becoming increasingly complex, and no one can afford to rely solely on performance marketing, the consumer demands a more balanced and authentic approach. By investing in both brand building and performance marketing, you can accelerate sustainable growth, drive customer loyalty, and weather the challenges of an evolving digital ecosystem – which let’s face it, is changing every day!