HomeHARD SKILLS, MARKETING FUNNELS, PERFORMANCEFIX LEAKY PERFORMANCE MARKETING FUNNELS with BRAND AFFINITY

FIX LEAKY PERFORMANCE MARKETING FUNNELS with BRAND AFFINITY

Written by: smichaelgriffin• June 14, 2025

Most would-be customers fall out of the performance marketing funnel. Brand affinity keeps twice as many in.

Simplified SEM funnel showing the key metrics that determine the ratio of potential customers to *actual* customers.

The Leaky Performance-Marketing Funnel

Imagine 100,000 qualified Google-searches for the exact category of the thing you sell. Say you sell premium family-camping tents and there are 100k “Buy best family camping tent” searches, ok?

Google is a competitive marketplace but you’ve got a decent performance-marketing budget: your ads are in front of half of those searches. I.e., you’ve got 50% Search Impression Share.

Your 50,000 searchers are ready to buy & your ad copy is very relevant: 5% of the searchers Click Through.

Boom: 2,500 ad-clickers hit your website. Your site loads fast, your family camping tents are well merchandised, and your checkout process is easy. E-com sites convert an average of 2.5% of their visitors (OptinMonster, 2025), but these shoppers are twice as qualified: 5% of them convert.

So, we’ve got: 100,000 customer searches * 50% Search Impression Share * 5% Click-Thru Rate * 5% Conversion rate

Math: 100,000 * 0.5 * 0.05 * 0.05 = 125

That’s 125 sales, a mere 0.125% of the 100,000 strong Google-search market. And that’s assuming things go well!

Searchers + Brand Affinity

Now imagine these searchers lack affinity for your brand: if they’re aware of you, their feelings are neutral going into the search. Wordstream reports they’re 1/2 to 1/3 as likely to click your ad and less than half as likely to convert!

Think about your own experience: when’s the last time you clicked an ad for brand you had no affinity for, and then went on to make a purchase on that brand’s website?

Considering the best case “leaky funnel” math, your performance search marketing efforts might only be profitable if they’re focused on the subset of those 100k searches that come from people who already know and trust your brand.

For most new & fast-growing brands, performance marketing should be an important revenue driver, but ultimately its success will be limited by the effectiveness of your brand-building efforts.

Optimize your performance marketing, but focus on building affinity with your audience, and perhaps you can sell them lower cost gateway products before they’re ready to purchase your core revenue drivers.