What is Performance Marketing?
The performance marketing association defines performance marketing as the following:
“Performance marketing is a comprehensive term that refers to online marketing and advertising programs in which advertisers (retailers or merchants) pay marketing companies (affiliates or publishers) when a specific action is completed; such as a sale, lead or click.”
So what does this actually mean?
As a marketer (or a company), you want to directly connect with your audience and bring attention to your product, service, or brand. To do this, you may create an ad that is shown to people on social media, or similarly in Google results when they search for certain products. With performance marketing, you pay depending on how your campaign performs. For example, you might pay every time a user clicks on your ad, or only when your campaign generates a sale.
This is totally different compared to the traditional marketing model, when for example, in print advertising, you will pay upfront for your ad to be printed. You’ve invested the money and effort upfront, and have little influence on how your ad performs.
How performance marketing works
To keep it simple, performance marketing has two distinct sides. One party owns the audience and another party (the marketer) wants to reach that audience.
Picture LinkedIn, which has over 774 million users who’ve displayed their professional information on the platform. That is a specific set of users which are valuable to advertisers looking to sell to these individuals. Through LinkedIn ads, marketers can target their desired customer profiles and pay based on the performance of specific actions such as clicks, downloads, or signups. Google offers the same to advertisers who want to reach unique audiences searching for products and services on their search engine.
Performance marketing channels
Social Media Platforms
Performance marketing is the core of the social media platform’s business model. For example, Facebook and Instagram offer companies access to specific audiences through cost per click (CPC) performance ad models. TikTok and LinkedIn on the other hand, offer a combination of free organic reach and paid performance marketing-based reach. TikTok has a specific for you page where it would recommend content based on your audience preference and behavior, and for brands, this could mean free organic reach.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
As the name suggests, Search Engine Marketing relies on traffic, from search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Advertisers pay search engines to promote their landing pages when users search for keywords related to the service or products they offer, but they only pay when the user clicks on their website.
Native advertising
Native advertising is designed to blend your ad into the publishers, or social platforms, design aesthetics and are therefore less intrusive to the end user. You may have seen examples of this content on platforms like the New York Times or Bloomberg with a ‘sponsored’ label, or content recommendation at the bottom of articles.
Affiliate Channels
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance marketing where third parties introduce the advertiser’s products to their audience for a cut of the sale. This usually relies on affiliate networks that manage partner relationships.
Benefits of performance marketing
Analytics and data tracking: You get to measure the performance of your goals such as clicks, impressions, leads, and sales directly, and instantly. With modern marketing management tools, it’s easy to track your ad performance and adjust or even cancel your campaigns based on the insights gathered.
ROI-Driven Marketing: Performance marketing focuses on bringing in a good return on investment. You can watch the results in real-time, adjust or reallocate your budget as you see fit, and even put a full stop to campaigns to avoid overpaying for underperforming campaigns.
Targeted & new audiences
Performance marketing can help you acquire an increased and more diversified audience that wouldn’t otherwise be possible with traditional advertising. Campaigns are highly targeted and you can easily adjust based on the audience you want to target.
Leverage your business through performance marketing with Ematic
These days, it’s not enough that businesses establish good branding. The new age of data-backed marketing ensures you only pay for the results you want, so your ad spend is worth every penny. Performance marketing is an excellent method to build your brand, improve product awareness, interact with your audience or even increase your sales without worrying about wasting tight budgets.
If you’re looking for a performance marketing agency that can help you plan the best strategy to drive results for your business, look no further. Ematic has just launched a new performance marketing service designed to increase your ROI. Learn more about our new service here, or contact us directly to discuss how we can help your business.