For me, the answer is that leaders should always be focused on both. Of course, there should be an intelligent balance against spend/budget. But do both. Regardless of stage or category. Do both.

If an early stage focused solely on performance-based marketing, the result is ignoring building awareness, which is key to filling the top of the funnel and engaging new prospects. Once you have targeted and retargeted, your new prospects fall off, and scaling ability can flatten out.

Note on branding: Building brand happens across the entire enterprise/business, not just through marketing. It happens through all aspects of customer engagement and internally with management and employee engagement; all need to be considered key audiences.

Building brand and awareness wider that a core target returns a wealth of benefits, not to mention, done well, reduces the cost of capital. It promotes awareness, loyalty, preference, and referral.

If you recognize that people have emotional relationships with companies and that they make emotional purchase decisions (both B2B and B2C), then building brand awareness of a brand's positioning and personality is critical to long-term sustained growth. We buy from people we like. You are building relationships.

So, do both.