Mark Grasse's DigitalMarketer Approach: Content That Builds Brands and Drives Revenue

Most marketers pick a side.

Brand marketers focus on awareness, perception, and long-term equity. Performance marketers focus on clicks, conversions, and immediate ROI.

Mark Grasse, leading creative at DigitalMarketer, argues this is a false choice. The best content does both: builds brand while driving measurable results.

Here’s what his approach reveals about content that works on both levels.

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The False Dichotomy

The traditional split:

Brand marketing:

• Focus on awareness and perception
• Long-term, hard to measure
• Creative-driven
• “Build the brand, sales will follow”

Performance marketing:

• Focus on clicks and conversions
• Short-term, highly measurable
• Data-driven
• “Optimize for ROI now”

Each side dismisses the other. Brand marketers call performance work “short-sighted.” Performance marketers call brand work “unmeasurable fluff.”

Mark’s take: both are right, and both are incomplete.

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The Integration Principle

Grasse’s DigitalMarketer approach integrates both:

Content should be:

• Creative enough to stand out and build brand
• Strategic enough to drive measurable action
• Distinctive enough to be remembered
• Optimized enough to convert

This isn’t compromise—it’s synthesis. The best content doesn’t sacrifice brand for performance or performance for brand.

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Brand-Building Elements

What makes content build brand:

Distinctive voice

Content that sounds like everyone else doesn’t build brand equity. Distinctive voice—whether irreverent, authoritative, warm, or provocative—creates recognition.

DigitalMarketer’s content has a recognizable personality: practical, slightly irreverent, focused on implementation over theory.

Consistent visual identity

Design, imagery, and visual treatment that’s immediately recognizable. When someone sees your content, they should know it’s yours before reading a word.

Point of view

Brands that stand for something are memorable. Content that expresses a clear perspective—even a controversial one—builds stronger brand than content that tries to please everyone.

Story and narrative

Facts inform. Stories connect. Brand-building content uses narrative to create emotional resonance, not just logical understanding.

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Performance-Driving Elements

What makes content convert:

Clear value proposition

What does the reader get? Content that performs makes the value explicit and specific.

Strategic CTAs

Not just “subscribe” but calls to action tied to reader intent and funnel stage. The right ask at the right time.

Conversion architecture

Headlines that grab attention. Subheads that maintain interest. Formatting that guides the eye. Structure that serves conversion, not just comprehension.

Measurable outcomes

Content tied to trackable actions: opt-ins, clicks, purchases. If you can’t measure it, you can’t optimize it.

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The DigitalMarketer Content Formula

How Grasse’s team creates content that does both:

Start with strategy

Before creative: what’s the goal? What action do we want? Who are we speaking to? What do they need to believe?

Creative serves strategy. Not the other way around.

Layer in brand

With strategy clear, add distinctive elements: voice, visual identity, point of view. Make it unmistakably yours.

Optimize for performance

Review against performance criteria: Is the headline compelling? Is the CTA clear? Is the path to conversion obvious?

Test and learn

Launch, measure, learn. What’s working? What’s not? Iterate based on data, not assumptions.

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Content Types That Do Both

Some formats naturally integrate brand and performance:

Educational content with personality

Teaching builds authority (brand) while demonstrating expertise (performance driver). But educational content with distinctive voice builds stronger brand than generic how-tos.

Stories with strategic CTAs

Narrative creates emotional connection (brand) while strategic calls to action drive conversion (performance). The story earns the ask.

Signature frameworks

Proprietary methods and frameworks (like DigitalMarketer’s “Customer Value Journey”) build brand through intellectual property while driving performance by giving readers tools to implement.

Behind-the-scenes content

Showing how you work builds authenticity (brand) while demonstrating capability (performance driver for services/courses).

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The Creative Brief Evolution

Traditional creative briefs prioritize one or the other.

Mark’s integrated approach includes:

Brand elements:

• Voice and tone guidelines
• Visual identity requirements
• Key brand messages
• Personality traits to convey

Performance elements:

• Primary conversion goal
• Target audience and their stage
• Key objections to address
• Metrics for success

Both in one brief. Both guiding one piece of content.

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Measuring Integrated Content

How to track content that serves both goals:

Brand metrics (longer-term)

• Brand awareness (surveys, search volume for brand terms)
• Brand sentiment (social listening, review analysis)
• Share of voice (compared to competitors)
• Content engagement beyond conversion (shares, comments, time on page)

Performance metrics (shorter-term)

• Conversion rate
• Cost per acquisition
• Return on ad spend
• Revenue attributed to content

Integrated metrics

• Customer lifetime value (brand loyalty meets performance)
• Organic traffic growth (brand awareness driving performance)
• Referral rate (brand advocacy driving acquisition)

Track both. Optimize for both. Understand how they interact.

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Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Brand without performance

Beautiful, distinctive content that doesn’t drive action. Feels good, doesn’t work. Art for art’s sake isn’t marketing.

Mistake 2: Performance without brand

Conversion-optimized content that’s indistinguishable from competitors. Works short-term, builds nothing long-term. You’re renting attention, not building equity.

Mistake 3: Alternating instead of integrating

“This piece is for brand, that piece is for performance.” Missed opportunity. Every piece should do both to some degree.

Mistake 4: Measuring one, ignoring the other

Tracking conversions but not brand impact (or vice versa). Incomplete picture leads to suboptimal decisions.

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Applying This to Your Content

How to create content that builds brand and drives performance:

Audit your current content

• Which pieces are brand-focused but don’t convert?
• Which pieces convert but could be anyone’s?
• Which pieces do both? What makes them work?

Develop your brand elements

• What’s your distinctive voice?
• What visual identity is recognizable?
• What’s your point of view that differentiates?

Add performance architecture

• Every piece needs a clear CTA
• Every piece needs conversion-oriented structure
• Every piece needs measurable goals

Integrate in planning

Don’t separate brand and performance planning. Brief every piece for both from the start.

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The DigitalMarketer Example

Look at DigitalMarketer’s content:

Brand elements:

• Recognizable visual style (orange, bold typography)
• Distinctive voice (practical, implementation-focused)
• Signature frameworks (Customer Value Journey, Machine)
• Clear point of view (marketing should drive measurable results)

Performance elements:

• Strategic lead magnets tied to content topics
• Clear CTAs throughout content
• Conversion-optimized landing pages
• Robust tracking and optimization

Neither sacrificed for the other. Both present in everything.

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The Bottom Line

Mark Grasse’s approach at DigitalMarketer rejects the brand vs. performance dichotomy.

The best content:

• Builds brand through distinctive voice, visual identity, and point of view
• Drives performance through strategic CTAs, conversion architecture, and measurable goals
• Integrates both from the planning stage, not as an afterthought

Content that only builds brand is inefficient. Content that only drives performance is unsustainable. Content that does both is the goal.

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Related Reading

• Ryan Deiss’s Customer Value Journey — The DigitalMarketer framework
• Todd Brown’s Big Idea Marketing — Differentiation through ideas
• Content Marketing vs. Direct Response Blogging — Finding the balance

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Ready to create content that builds brand and drives results? See the Blogs That Sell system—the integrated methodology for content that converts.

Or start with the free training for the core principles.