Why building brands is a critical next step for startups and scale-ups

Stephen Whiteside

Performance marketing and brand building fulfill different roles in a company’s evolution from startup to scaleup to big brand, and it is vital to know how this process works in practice to grow.

There is a marketing “secret” that giant tech platforms and established brands alike do not want startups and scale-ups to know, according to Grace Kite.

“And the secret is this: Performance marketing can’t drive fast growth in a cost-effective way forever,” Kite, the founder and managing director of Magic Numbers, the marketing econometrics consultancy, said at SXSW 2024.

On the one hand, fledgling businesses usually depend on performance marketing to convert shoppers who are ready to buy. And digital platforms like Facebook and Google have built lucrative ad models premised on that notion, meaning they do not generally...

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