Chasing short-term gain often leads to long-term pain. A 2024 report from Interbrand revealed that the world's top 100 brands have missed out on hundreds of billions in potential revenue in the past year alone by prioritizing the quick wins of performance marketing over long-term brand strategy.
As consumers spend more time on digital platforms, annual digital ad spending is projected to reach $870.85 billion by 2027, an increase of nearly 60% over a 5 year span. Despite this growth, the digital advertising playing field is littered with challenges, including the decline of third-party cookies and fragmented attribution models.
One glance at your Instagram feed reveals countless similar companies competing for your clicks. In this noisy digital environment full of choices, marketers need to work extra hard to ensure their brands stand out. To cut through the chaos, more marketing teams are turning to evergreen brand-building as the key to relevance and long-term success.
The Cost of Short-Term Thinking
Performance marketing focuses on driving immediate actions, like clicks or sales, with a central obsession on maximizing return on ad spend (ROAS). While it’s an effective tool for short-term gains, it’s not a sustainable way to build a business.
Brands that lean too heavily on promotions risk a “race to the bottom,” where price becomes the only differentiator. This not only erodes customer trust but also cheapens the overall brand.
Today’s consumers expect more than ads - especially since we’re overexposed to them everywhere we turn. The world is more connected than ever, and businesses are spending more on digital channels to meet consumers where they are. But too often, marketers mistake where they spend for how they spend.
Pouring money into ads alone isn’t enough. To truly connect, brands need to focus on building communities, creating meaningful experiences, and building relationships that bring their identity to life.
For example, think about what makes social media so captivating: sharing experiences, laughing at memes, or scrolling through your aunt’s unsolicited conspiracy theories. No one’s scrolling through social media to see more ads.
Brand-Building Is No Longer a Dirty Word
In recent years, the hyper-focus on performance marketing led many teams to dismiss brand-building as a superficial exercise. But that’s changing. According to a LinkedIn study, 67% of B2B marketers are increasing their investments in brand-building initiatives this year, making it a top B2B marketing trend for 2025.
Why the shift? Beyond the growing challenges with advertising, it’s harder than ever to stand out online. Social media algorithms are unpredictable, AI-generated content is flooding the web, and trends are cycling faster than ever.
To stay competitive, marketers are focusing on building evergreen brands - brands designed to stay relevant and active year-round, not just during campaigns. Evergreen brands prioritize longevity and adaptability, ensuring their messages, values, and customer experiences remain consistent, impactful, and relevant across all channels, no matter the season or market shifts.
How to Build an Evergreen Brand
Evergreen brand building is all about ensuring your brand remains timeless and adaptable. Customer loyalty doesn’t happen overnight, it’s earned, not bought.
Here are 6 key concepts marketers should prioritize when building an evergreen brand:
1. Define and Stay True to Your Brand Mission, Vision, and Values
A brand’s purpose should align with what your customers care about most. For example, Headspace’s commitment to improving health and happiness through mindfulness directly aligns with its audience, who is often seeking stress relief, better mental health, and more focus.
To practice what it preaches, Headspace positions itself as a dependable resource for its audience, offering guided meditations, “sleepcasts” (sleep-inducing audio content), and expert mental wellness tips through its digital properties.
2. Create Authentic and Consistent Messaging
With more and more AI-generated slop clogging digital channels, consumers are becoming increasingly critical of what’s authentic and what’s not. By crafting a unified message and tone across channels, prioritizing storytelling over transactions, and most importantly, showcasing valuable expertise, brands can position themselves not just as sellers, but as trusted authorities. Simply put, your brand should talk the talk and walk the walk.
3. Invest in Exceptional Customer Experiences
A great customer experience can mean the difference between a one-time transaction and lifelong loyalty. While truly exceptional customer experiences are rare, the good news is that they’re unforgettable.
Take my recent experience with eBay as an example. I purchased a brand-new pair of sneakers that came with a badge certifying they had been inspected by an expert and guaranteed authentic. However, when they arrived, I noticed a small scuff on them. I reached out to eBay about returning the product, and to my surprise (and delight), they told me to keep the sneakers and refunded me the full price as a gesture of gratitude for my loyalty.
This unexpected act of generosity didn’t just resolve the issue it made me feel valued as a customer and gave me a stronger appreciation for the brand.
4. Prioritize Quality Content Over Quantity
In a content-bloated world, less is more. With so much noise, the only effective way to stand out is by providing real value to your customers. Focusing on thought leadership, educational resources, and evergreen content that delivers long-term value that results in quality over quantity.
Take HubSpot, for example. Their blog isn’t just another content machine; it’s a go-to resource packed with free tools, how-to guides, videos, and templates that marketers actually use. That’s the kind of value that makes an impact.
5. Measure Beyond Immediate Metrics
Metrics like click-through rates (CTR) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) only tell part of the story. Brands have spent too long trying to use these metrics as indicators of success. Instead, focus on long-term metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV), brand awareness, and online sentiment. These paint a sharper picture of how your brand is perceived and where you need to improve.
6. Leverage Community Building
Brand loyalty can’t exist without a strong community. Encouraging user-generated content, advocacy programs, and social proof, all work to create a community of interested, and like minded consumers for your brand. Furthermore, brands must extend that community building to their social media pages.
Seems obvious, right? Well, brands got lazy and largely ignored the main function of their social platforms in favor of the previously mentioned ad strategies. For brands to succeed in Evergreen brand building, they need to recoup their social media pages as a home for their community to interact with each other and the brand itself.
Building Long-Term Success with Evergreen Brands
Evergreen brand building isn’t just a marketing strategy, it’s the foundation of long-term success for any business. By focusing on building relationships, delivering value, and staying true to your company’s mission, marketers can establish lasting loyalty and build brands that endure the test of time.
In a world oversaturated with digital ads and AI-generated content, the brands that provide authentic, meaningful experiences will be the ones that truly stand out.