-$29
StatBrand Strategy
The average US brand loses money on every new customer it acquires.
US brands now lose an average of $29 for every new customer acquired - the acquisition machine costs more than it returns.
Source
Springboards Spark Sessions: Future Demand with James Hurman (2026)
James Hurman (Previously Unavailable, Tracksuit); host Springboards
00:04:45
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StatMost US marketers say performance marketing spend has diminishing returns, and two thirds say their dashboards look good but growth doesn't follow.StatA roughly even 50/50 split between brand and performance spend delivers the highest total marketing ROI.StatIn every market studied, most potential buyers are not in-market yet - future demand outnumbers current demand.Stat84% of purchasers end up choosing a brand they were already biased toward before they started shopping.CaseCoca-Cola's ubiquitous branding works as familiarity infrastructure, not a reminder to buy right now.StatBrand awareness does not move click-through rate, but it strongly predicts conversion rate: a brand at 60% awareness converts nearly 3x better than one at 20%.Quote"Conversion rate is not a factor of how good the performance marketing is. It's a factor of how good the brand marketing is." - James HurmanStatAdvertising conversion rates - about 1% typically, 15% at best - have not changed in 100 years despite a century of advances in creativity, targeting and testing.WarningAIDA was built around 1900 as a sales-process model, not an advertising model, and advertising has been misapplying it ever since.Quote"Advertising does not cause sales. It does, however, ensure brands win a greater share of them" - by creating future demand (biasing tomorrow's buyers) and converting current demand (closing today's).PrincipleWithout continuously creating future demand, sales growth hits a ceiling and plateaus no matter how much more is spent on performance marketing.CaseVolvo Trucks' Epic Split deliberately reached millions of people who would never buy a truck, to bias future buyers and grow market share for years afterward.