Brand vs Performance Is a False Choice: Ruslan Tymofieiev Explores How To Balance Both For Growth

Teams often treat media buys and brand building as rival priorities. But the result of this mindset is swings that burn budget and stall growth. Mixing both performance and brand marketing helps to avoid that trap by aligning one story across channels that both persuade now and compound tomorrow. Because when the message is consistent, creative fatigue slows, and every paid impression works harder.

In this article, Tymofieiev Ruslan, Founder & CEO of the venture builder CLUST and Co-Founder & Managing Partner of the venture fund  Adventures Lab, explains why using both approaches to promotion makes sense and what benefits they deliver.

Performance Marketing: Where KPIs Drive Every Decision

Performance marketing is an approach where every action is measurable and tied directly to a result, a click, lead, conversion, or sale. Instead of chasing broad impressions, it runs on numbers: teams see exactly what each dollar delivers. Decisions are guided by tracking, attribution, and A/B tests against clear KPIs: CTR, CPA, ROAS, and conversion rate. Its core advantage is control, campaigns can be paused or re-targeted instantly.

Another strength is speed: with solid tracking and benchmarks, results are visible almost immediately, CPA, CTR, conversion rate, and ROAS. Teams test creatives, audiences, bids, and landing pages in real time, enabling quick responses to seasonality and shifts in user behavior. Put simply, performance thrives in demand-rich environments, picking up intent through search, precision social buys, affiliate and retargeting, and email. Yet this is also the limitation. A short transaction cycle leaves little space for emotional narrative, differentiation, and trust. Without brand support, performance becomes expensive and stalls: users click but rarely become loyal, and competitors can outbid you.

Ruslan Tymofieiev underscores: performance marketing scales what already works, but brand marketing keeps it working. He advocates combining the two, using performance to prove and accelerate unit economics, while brand reduces future CPA and compounds LTV. For example, a SaaS startup targeting distributed teams pilots Google Ads and LinkedIn retargeting to lower its cost per signup. The team runs three landing-page messages, «14-day free trial», «Boost team efficiency», and «Save 10 hours a week». The next step, consistent brand storytelling around «we give teams their time back», is what Ruslan would prioritise to defend margin and sustain growth.

Brand Marketing: Identity, Positioning, and Proof That Endure

Brand marketing is the long game: it builds awareness, trust, and reputation so customers choose you before they need a specific product. It shapes perception and creates demand ahead of demand, using consistent storytelling, visual identity, and positioning to make the brand instantly recognisable and meaningfully different.

The brand’s «why» and values are placed front and center, independent of any single launch: content that teaches, PR that builds credibility, sponsorships and partnerships that signal stature, events, and community that humanise the company. Blogs, podcasts, newsletters, and thought-leadership pieces make the brand the go-to reference in its category.

Because brand effects accrue over quarters, not days, Ruslan Tymofieiev notes they’re harder to measure in the short term, but they are decisive for sustainable unit economics. Strong brands lower CAC by raising unaided awareness and baseline intent, lift conversion rates across performance channels, improve price resilience, and grow LTV by deepening loyalty.

In Ruslan’s model, execution remains disciplined even when the objective is emotional connection. Run a consistent cadence, not occasional spikes: define the narrative (mission → promise → proof), lock the identity, logo, colors, voice, and maintain always-on channels that keep the brand culturally visible. PR, education, and flagship content build the narrative, partnerships and events extend reach and recall, and creators deliver authenticity. Performance media still plays a role, but as an amplifier of the brand story, not a substitute for it.

For example, a B2B SaaS cybersecurity company had become over-reliant on lead-gen ads as CPCs rose and conversions flatlined. The team rolled out a new identity and launched a 3-pillar program:

• Authority – quarterly threat-intel reports and a technical podcast featuring respected CISOs.
• Presence – earned PR around zero-day responses and sponsorship of two marquee security conferences,
• Proof – customer films and a «breach-simulation lab» roadshow.

Over two quarters, branded search rose 38%, share of voice in trade media doubled, and homepage conversion on direct/branded traffic increased from 2.9% to 4.4%. The pipeline became less sensitive to bid inflation because buyers were already predisposed to the brand.

Ruslan Tymofieiev’s takeaway is pragmatic: performance captures demand; brand creates it. Teams that treat brand as a system – consistent message, consistent presence, consistent proof – accept slower feedback loops today to earn cheaper acquisition, stronger margins, and more durable growth tomorrow.

Why Do Founders Often Ignore Brand Marketing?

Ruslan Tymofieiev argues that founders ignore brand marketing not because it’s unimportant, but because performance marketing feels safer. It delivers instant numbers – CTR, CPA, ROAS – and a clean line from spend to revenue. When budgets are tight, the dashboard’s numbers appear reliable, but brand work, with its slower feedback, seems risky. The result is a bias toward short-term attribution and underinvestment in the very asset that lowers future CAC.

Ruslan also sees three recurring traps. First, the lack of time horizon: brand effects compound over quarters, so early signals are weak and easily dismissed. Second, measurement mismatch: teams apply performance KPIs to brand work, then declare it ineffective because it doesn’t move weekly CPA. Third, cash constraint logic: when money is tight, founders treat brand as a discretionary expense rather than an investment in mental availability, price resilience, and conversion lift across every channel. Ruslan’s correction is a mindset shift: brand is an asset, not a line item. It creates demand before it exists, shapes preference, and makes all paid acquisition cheaper and more durable.

The investor also favors a pragmatic «brandformance» approach: one story, two clocks. Keep the narrative, identity, and proof points consistent, but convey them in a creative that still prompts a clear action. In practice, run a steady drumbeat of storytelling – content, PR, partnerships, community – paired with paid distribution that includes a clear CTA, and track both brand and performance on one dashboard.

Let’s take this case: a developer tools startup hits a plateau after squeezing CPCs and optimising landing pages. Ruslan Tymofieiev suggests adding a brand layer around a single promise, like «Ship secure code faster» – then execute: publish a quarterly benchmark report, place founder commentary in trade media, sponsor two credible dev conferences, and film customer mini-cases that prove the promise. Those assets then fuel performance ads with consistent headlines and strong CTAs. Over the next two quarters, branded search and direct visits rise, conversion on warm traffic improves, and blended CAC declines because more users arrive predisposed to choose the product. Performance harvests demand, but the brand creates it.

His bottom line: founders don’t need to choose between brand and performance – they need to sequence and integrate them. Consider brand investment as equity with compounding returns, and your performance metrics will strengthen as a result.

Practical Steps to Balance Performance and Brand Marketing

Ruslan Tymofieiev lays out a pragmatic, numbers-first playbook for sequencing spend and proving how brand and performance reinforce each other.

• Open with a performance-heavy mix (60–70%) to secure cash flow. Use performance to validate unit economics fast (CPA/ROAS/conversion rate), lock in winning channels/ad sets, and recycle profits into durable brand assets.
• Set a glide path to 50/50 once revenue stabilises. When CAC and payback have held steady for 2–3 cycles, move 5–10 percentage points of spend each quarter from performance into brand, and maintain always-on performance to harvest the demand brand creates.
• Refresh creatives often and keep brand codes fixed. Refresh hooks, formats, and CTAs every 2–4 weeks, but keep brand codes – logo, colours, voice, core promise, and memory cues — consistent so recall compounds.
• Run one story on two clocks. Maintain a single narrative with consistent proof points across brand and DR, then pipeline brand assets from PR, content, and partnerships into performance creatives and matching landers.
• Instrument brand impact and own it in one place. Track share of search, direct traffic, brand-lift studies, SOV, sentiment, and NPS alongside CPA/ROAS on a joint dashboard with clear ownership.
• Operate on a quarterly cadence. Progressively rebalance in 70/30 → 60/40 → 55/45 → 50/50, scaling the brand assets that show the highest assisted conversions and lift while protecting near-term efficiency.
• Test for incrementality, not just attribution. Use geo splits, holdouts, and time-based tests to quantify the brand’s effect on blended CAC, assisted conversions, and LTV, and use those reads to justify each budget shift.

The Results That Performance and Brand Marketing Bring

Ruslan Tymofieiev frames performance marketing as a real-time learning system: every click, view, and conversion produces structured data that shortens the distance between hypothesis and proof. Continuous tracking, A/B tests, and attribution turn campaigns into diagnostics, showing which messages, creatives, audiences, and channels move the funnel, when fatigue sets in, and how price or impact CPA, ROAS, and payback. Search queries reveal customer language, on-site behavior pinpoints landing-page friction, and cohort analysis shows where LTV is created or lost. With these insights, teams can pause waste, reallocate budget to winners, and scale with far less guesswork.

He emphasises the feedback loop beyond media efficiency: performance signals inform the product and the roadmap. Comments on ads, search queries, and heatmaps on high-intent pages reveal unmet jobs-to-be-done, while retargeting and email tests confirm which value propositions stick. Ruslan supposes that the compounding advantage isn’t just cheaper acquisition today, it’s the steady stream of customer insight that improves creativity, reduces friction, and guides what to build next.

Ruslan Tymofieiev argues that brand marketing builds the memory structures that make a company easy to recognise and easier to trust: repeated, consistent signals, logo, colours, tone of voice, narrative, product experience, teach the market what to expect and make the brand findable in the mind at the moment of choice. That consistency compounds into faster recognition and positive expectation, which in turn lowers perceived risk, fuels word-of-mouth, attracts talent who want the brand on their CV, and reduces price sensitivity because buyers believe they’re getting more than a commodity, they’re buying into a promise.

Over time, brand marketing converts intermittent buyers into fans, lifts conversion across every channel, and lengthens LTV, all while insulating the business from auction volatility and copycat offers. Ruslan is sure: this is why brand isn’t a discretionary expense, but an asset that keeps performance efficient and growth durable.

Ruslan Tymofieiev maintains that a brand creates predisposition, which makes every performance dollar work harder, higher click-through and conversion rates, better ROAS, and more repeat purchases that compound LTV. When brand codes and credibility boost share of search, direct visits, and consideration, performance shifts from cold starts to harvesting warm intent at scale. Retargeting costs drop, lookalikes improve, and creatives wear out more slowly since the narrative is familiar. In his view, the payoff is nonlinear: a stronger brand doesn’t add a few points to efficiency, it unlocks step-changes in assisted conversions and payback periods, so that the very success of performance funds more brand.

How to Turn the Balance Into Growth Opportunities?

Ruslan Tymofieiev notes that global leaders blend both disciplines with rigor: for example, Apple uses iconic storytelling and design codes such as «Shot on iPhone», and its retail experience to set a premium frame, then captures intent with precision performance through search, App Store placements, and remarketing tied to product drops to convert that halo into sales. Nike builds identity through «Just Do It», athlete equity, and community apps like Run Club and Training Club. The team also uses performance media to personalise offers, boost membership sign-ups, and clear inventory efficiently. Grammarly earns trust via helpful brand content and authority in writing education, then scales growth through high-intent search, YouTube pre-rolls, and tight onboarding experiments that lift free-to-paid conversion. Ruslan says that the pattern is consistent: brand sets the price and preference, performance harvests demand with measurable ROAS, together raising branded search, improving CVR, lowering blended CAC, and compounding LTV.

The investor points to Ukrainian examples where PR-led visibility plus disciplined paid delivered step-change reach abroad. Ajax Systems coupled a steady drumbeat of brand signals, global awards, marketing storytelling, and market-entry PR, with targeted display and search to warm up new countries, where awareness work and structured targeting supported distributor sales. That mix underpinned continued international growth and a formal push into the U.S. market. Another company, Holywater, built media credibility through product news, partnerships, and industry press while running high-efficiency user-acquisition sprints. Reported results included sharp performance lifts and momentum that translated into major content collaborations and global user scale, evidence that brand heat made performance dollars convert faster across channels.

Ruslan Tymofieiev’s conclusion is simple: when brands pair structured demand creation with disciplined demand capture, the economics improve across the funnel. A stronger brand raises customers’ predisposition, so prospects convert faster, sales cycles compress, and price objections fade. Warmer intent also means cheaper media and better unit economics, CAC drops, ROAS steadies, and channel volatility hurts less. On the back end, trust compounds into retention, upgrades, and referrals that expand customer lifetime value and make growth less dependent on ever-rising ad spend. In Ruslan’s view, that is how marketing stops being a cost and starts behaving like an asset, shortening cycles, lowering acquisition costs, and expanding LTV in a single, compounding loop.