Every wellness marketer eventually hits the same question, and it usually arrives with a dashboard open. The performance numbers are right there, updated hourly, and they are easy to read as the whole truth. The brand work is slower, harder to attribute, and the budget for it feels like a bet. Is the brand spend worth it?
The short answer is yes, and the research says so, but the honest version is more useful than the slogan. Brand marketing and performance marketing do different jobs. The split between them is a category-average finding rather than a law. And the reason the question feels unanswerable is that most teams never measure the brand half. This guide sets out the distinction, the evidence, and the way to resolve the doubt.
The short answer
Brand marketing builds demand; performance marketing captures it. The IPA analysis by Binet and Field found that the brands that grew most spent roughly 60% of budget on brand building and 40% on activation, a category-average finding rather than a rule, and one that DTC and wellness brands may not match. The way to know whether your brand spend is working is to measure the brand half, continuously, the way you already measure the performance half.
40,000+
fitness and health professionals in the hale ecosystem
~7 in 10
coaches recommend at least one supplement category to clients
152
countries reached across coaches and their clients
Where the figures come from
This guide quotes the already-published topline from hale's ecosystem research: a voluntary practice-profile survey (985 usable responses) combined with platform activity across a 90-day window in 2026, drawn from more than 40,000 fitness and health professionals and their clients. Everything is aggregated and anonymised. The 60/40 split is a category-average finding from Binet and Field's analysis for the IPA, set out in The Long and the Short of It, and is attributed as such rather than claimed as hale's own.
What brand marketing and performance marketing each do
Brand marketing is the work of making a brand easier to think of and easier to recognise. It builds mental availability, the probability that the brand comes to mind when a buying occasion arrives, and it compounds slowly. Performance marketing is the work of capturing demand that already exists. Paid social, search and affiliates take someone who is already looking and convert them, and the results are visible in the ad account within days.
The two are not rivals. They are a division of labour. Activation captures demand and brand building creates it, and a business that funds only activation is harvesting a brand it never plants. The strategy layer behind that distinction, and the Ehrenberg-Bass view of how brands actually grow, is set out in the guide to brand building.
The 60/40 split, and what it is not
The most cited number in this debate is the 60/40 split. The IPA analysis by Les Binet and Peter Field, set out in The Long and the Short of It, found that across the campaigns they studied, the brands that grew most over the long term spent roughly 60% of their budget on brand building and 40% on activation.
Two things matter about that number. It is a category-average finding, not a law, so it is a starting point for a discussion rather than a target to hit blindly. And it comes from a dataset that skews towards large, established brands, so a DTC wellness challenger may index differently. The honest reading is that the balance matters more than the exact ratio, and the right balance for a given brand is a question the brand's own data should answer.
Why wellness brands over-index on performance
Wellness is a DTC-heavy category, and DTC businesses are built on performance marketing. The dashboards are excellent, the attribution is immediate, and the discipline of a monthly customer-acquisition number is a real strength. The cost is that a brand can end up funding only the half of the system that captures demand, while the demand itself is created by competitors with stronger brands.
The pattern is familiar. A challenger runs a tight performance engine, grows quickly on the back of a category that is itself growing, and then hits a plateau when the cheap demand runs out. The brand that wins the category over time is usually the one that kept building mental availability while the performance engine ran, so that when the buying occasion arrives, it is the brand that surfaces.
The blind spot: the professional layer
There is a second reason the brand half matters in wellness, and it is the reason hale exists. A large share of what consumers buy in this category is chosen by a professional first. The coach, the trainer, the practitioner who decides what to recommend to a client. That recommendation is brand building in its purest form, a trusted person vouching for a brand at the moment of choice, and it is invisible to a general-population tracker.
Across the hale ecosystem, roughly seven in ten coaches recommend at least one supplement category to their clients. That makes professional recommendation a mainstream entry point, not a niche one. The data on the layer sits in the recommendation layer research, and the case for reading both sides of the sale is in Both Sides of the Sale. For a wellness brand, the professional layer is where brand building shows up in the numbers, and it is the part of the market a performance dashboard cannot see.
How to resolve the doubt: measure the brand half
The reason the brand versus performance question feels unanswerable is that the two halves are measured on different instruments. Performance has the ad account, updated hourly. Brand has nothing, or a survey run once a year that is stale by the time it arrives. The doubt is not a sign that brand spend is wrong. It is a sign that the brand half is unmeasured.
The fix is to measure the brand half the way you already measure the performance half. Track awareness, consideration and preference every month, against a fixed competitive set, and the brand spend stops being a bet and becomes a number you can read. The plain-English guide to what those measures are and how to read them is the guide to brand tracking, and how hale runs the measurement continuously is on the brand insights page.
See the brand half in numbers
Brand versus performance stops being a debate when both halves are measured. hale tracks awareness, consideration and preference continuously, against your competitive set, including the professionals who shape the category.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between brand marketing and performance marketing?
Brand marketing builds demand by making a brand easier to think of and recognise over time. Performance marketing captures demand that already exists, through paid social, search and affiliates, with results visible in the ad account within days. They are a division of labour, not rivals.
Is the 60/40 brand to performance split a rule?
No. The 60/40 split is a category-average finding from Binet and Field's IPA analysis in The Long and the Short of It, not a law. It is a starting point for a discussion, and DTC and wellness brands may index differently, so the right balance is a question a brand's own data should answer.
Why do wellness brands over-index on performance marketing?
Because wellness is a DTC-heavy category and DTC businesses are built on performance marketing, with excellent dashboards and immediate attribution. The cost is that a brand can fund only the half that captures demand while competitors with stronger brands create it. The brands that win over time usually keep building the brand half while the performance engine runs.
How do you know if brand marketing is working?
By measuring the brand half the way you measure the performance half: track awareness, consideration and preference every month against a fixed competitive set. Continuous brand tracking turns the brand spend from a bet into a number you can read, and it is the instrument that resolves the brand versus performance question.
Published August 2026 as the effectiveness hub of hale's guide to brand building and measurement for health and wellness brands. hale is a health-tech holding company; its coaching platforms, QuickCoach and FitFocus, form the network behind its research. The 60/40 split is a category-average finding from Binet and Field (IPA), attributed rather than claimed. To see the brand half of your budget measured against your competitive set, start a conversation or reach us at research@halehealth.io.
