Marketers are being pushed harder every day to do more with less and show results faster, but this doesn’t mean marketing must trade off between performance and brand building, says Ryan Nelsen.
“I definitely see an opportunity for marketers to bring these worlds together to drive a bigger impact,” says Nelsen, CMO of StackAdapt. The advertising and orchestration platform aims to pull together all the channels a brand uses to drive its message, to find the right audience, personalize creative, run campaigns, and then optimize and measure the results all in one place, he explains.
Getting that view and establishing a “North Star” is crucial for CMOs who are under pressure to perform in a more complex marketplace, Nelsen explains.
“The reality is marketers today are being pulled in two directions: Prove performance now or build the brand for the future. When a new CMO comes into an organization, they’re trying to get some quick wins, they’re trying to move the needle quickly, so they often focus on performance right away,” says Nelsen. That could be shortsighted, he says.
“If you only focus on branding right away, you’re probably going to get fired because you’re not showing results immediately, but if you only focus on performance, your top of the funnel is going to dry up and you’re going to lose that long-term value,” he explains. Down the road, it becomes more difficult to drive growth and hit revenue targets.
Nelsen noted a study by StackAdapt and ad industry business intelligence firm Advertiser Perceptions found that 74% of marketers prioritize performance when evaluating campaigns. But he countered that another StackAdapt study proved a 50-50 split between the two approaches leads to growth. StackAdapt partnered with Kantar to analyze thousands of companies and found a more balanced approach resulted in approximately a 10% lift in sales.
“I definitely see an opportunity for marketers to bring these worlds together to drive a bigger impact,” says Nelsen. “I see it as a critical thing, end to end.”
Balance and Momentum
It’s up to CMOs to establish that balance, and it starts by organizing the teams and the tech stack to make the best use of information and act on it, says Nelsen. Disconnected data, media and tools make it harder to gauge what is really moving the needle and where resources could be best put to use, he explains. The best teams have consolidated their tech stacks to make it easier to find that “North Star,” says Nelsen.
Nelsen did something similar after he joined StackAdapt in 2024. The company was growing fast, “but very few people knew about our brand,” he says. He created seven functional teams in the marketing organization to balance fostering continued revenue growth with “making sure everybody knows who we are and why they should partner with us,” he explains.
“It’s all about the right people in the right roles,” he says. “At the end of the day, you’ve got to know what your brand and company needs and put yourself in the best position to drive performance now and brand growth long term.
The two can only reinforce each other, if properly orchestrated, says Nelsen. Conversion increases by about 30% when consumers “have validation that they’ve seen you out in the world,” says Nelsen. Even he is not immune to it. Nelsen remembers the stir of recognition when he saw StackAdapt’s advertising being showcased in the ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, and the texts and calls that followed.
“It was a fun moment for StackAdapt to take center stage,” he says.
Momentum, and how a brand shows up in culture and conversations, is a strong reinforcement to help sales and revenue growth, says Nelsen.
“When there’s momentum of a brand, you can feel it, you can see it in the world, you can see that customers are becoming fans, that there’s a movement,” he says.
Marketers can strike that balance by having brand growth campaigns that also drive consumers to take a measurable action, such as clicking on a message, scanning a QR code or downloading an app.
“It’s really important to be able to connect those dots, what’s working in the entire funnel, measure the gaps and the friction points, and then start to optimize and close those gaps,” says Nelsen.
“Get Your House in Order”
For marketing leaders, this requires focus, says Nelsen. “Orchestration can be complicated,” but it doesn’t need to be, he says.
“I believe we’re going to be more conductors of the orchestra, while these tools and systems come together,” he says. “You need a conductor to bring data and AI tools together, and I think that the best teams are doing that.”
Marketing leadership has to establish priorities, says Nelsen. First, it needs to make sure the team is hitting all the funnel metrics in terms of qualified leads, opportunities, sourced revenue etc. Only then is the marketer empowered to go to the executive team and ask for budgets to make some bets and build how the brand is seen in the world.
“Get your house in order, being brilliant at the basics first and making sure that you’re hitting all the right things in stride,” says Nelsen. “That builds trust in the organization and with the board to go and make some bold moves.”
It’s not an easy task, says Nelsen, when marketers are increasingly being asked to do more with less. But focusing on establishing that balance is the way forward, he says.
“I think of us marketers kind of locking arms and just saying: ‘Okay, get brilliant at the basics, figure out what is going to move the needle. How do you get scrappy with that budget?’” says Nelsen. “Then once you start to get those wins, go pour more fuel on the fire and do more with it.”
