Today, companies that want to grow are increasingly turning to performance marketing to succeed. Since performance marketing is results-based, it is ideal for businesses aiming to quickly reach larger audiences. Moreover, firms that use performance marketing platforms can track their marketing campaigns‘ performance, allowing firms to maintain total control.
In 2021, almost 63 percent of marketers increased their marketing budgets on the previous year, a trend that has since continued. Indeed, it’s not hard to see why: compared to digital marketing, traditional marketing produces 50 percent fewer interactions. And this means that businesses with a grasp of the benefits of digital advertising will only invest more in it.
So, if you’re interested in how performance marketing can help your business and want to learn more about it, this article is for you.
What is performance marketing?
Digital marketing is an umbrella term denoting many different things. Every year, the digital marketing industry grows, introducing new ideas, concepts, practices, and disciplines. Performance marketing is one of these branches, and it’s a strategy whereby advertisers and/or ad networks only pay when a desired action occurs, such as an app install or click, etc.
In a nutshell, performance marketing is results-driven, which is why it’s also popularly known as performance-based marketing. In it, advertisers connect with ad networks and publishers to place and run their ads on various channels such as videos, search engines, social media channels, web content, etc.
In traditional marketing, advertisers pay despite often being unable to gauge a campaign’s performance, which isn’t the case when it comes to performance marketing.
How does performance marketing work?
Advertisers use various metrics to check how an ad is performing. Some of the common ones include:
Cost per click (CPC)
Advertisers pay publishers based on the number of clicks they can generate in this format.
Cost per impression (CPI)
In this method, advertisers pay publishers based on the number of impressions they receive.
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
You only pay the publisher when they get someone to undertake a specific action, such as visiting your blog page or sharing their contact information. CPA is similar to cost per lead (CPL) and cost per sale (CPS).
Cost per lead (CPL)
With CPL, you only pay when the publisher can generate a lead.
Cost per sale (CPS)
As stated above, CPS is similar to CPL. In this payment method, you only pay publishers when they generate sales or conversions. CPS is one of the common affiliate marketing strategies.
Marketers use performance marketing platforms to track their campaigns and monitor these metrics and others.
The best performance marketing channels
While there are many channels that advertisers can use to reach their target audience, here are some of the most popular:
Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash
Display or banner ads
Display ads can appear on any part of a webpage, from the middle to the sides and anywhere from top to bottom. And even though they have lost some of their impact these days, a lot of companies still like to use them. The reasons for their declining commercial popularity are twofold. On the one hand, a lot of people have started to use ad blockers to remove advertisements from their browsing. On the other, there’s also the phenomenon of banner blindness. Despite this, display ads are still very popular among advertisers.
Content marketing
Today, 70 percent of B2C marketers and 73 percent of B2B marketers use content marketing as part of their marketing strategies. Content marketing focuses on educating prospects and customers about the benefits of a company’s products or services.
Companies that use content marketing promote their brands subtly, presenting their brand within the content they publish. For example, a sports merchandise company might use blog posts to discuss the benefits of playing a particular sport. Thus, they will increase interest in their readers’ minds, increasing sales of their sports products commensurately.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Social media marketing
Performance marketers find social media marketing to be highly effective. It helps them place their products and services right before their target audience. One of the best things about social media marketing is that users can share the content that brands publish on a platform, thus helping those companies reach more people.
Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter also help brands to reach their target audience. To begin with, any company starting out in social media marketing should do some research and decide which social media platforms make sense for them to use.
Native advertising
Native advertising works because it is easy for advertisers to subtly promote their sponsored content so that viewers cannot distinguish it from other organic content. Since native ads do not look like adverts, viewers are more likely to engage with them. These ads, therefore, have the power to drive conversions.
Search engine marketing (SEM)
People use search engines such as Google to search for answers to their queries. As such, for anyone using this type of marketing, optimizing your website is crucial so that you reach your target audience. SEM ads also help brands receive impressions and clicks from potential customers.
Advantages of performance marketing
There are so many benefits to performance marketing. Here’s a list explaining why.
It’s measurable and trackable
When it comes to performance marketing, you can both track and measure the results, giving you an accurate understanding of how your campaigns are performing. Moreover, you only pay when someone browsing online performs a specific action, such as clicking a link or submitting their contact information. Companies that use a performance marketing platform have a significant advantage due to their ability to track and measure results.
It’ll expand your reach
In today’s business, the number of online publishers ready and willing to publish your ads on their platforms is almost limitless. So, by embracing performance marketing, you will reach your target audience more quickly. In doing so, you will be able to build awareness of your brand and pay the publishers based on the payment format that you choose.
You can leverage the creative powers of affiliates
Affiliates are not only creative but also innovative. You can use their talent and skills to boost your sales or to build your brand. They will create content and do everything necessary to drive conversions and help you get results. You can use the performance marketing platform to check which affiliates bring you the results and reward them accordingly.
What is a performance marketing platform?
Performance marketing software helps businesses to track, measure, and optimize their digital marketing campaigns based on their performance.
As mentioned, ad networks, agencies, and advertisers use this software for pay-for-performance advertising campaigns such as affiliate marketing, pay-per-click (PPC), and other performance-based advertising models.
Performance marketing software typically includes features such as:
Conversion tracking: The ability to track user actions and conversions on a website, such as purchases, sign-ups, or downloads.
Analytics and reporting: It enables advertisers to measure the performance of campaigns in real time and generate reports that provide insights into the campaign’s effectiveness. For example, Swaarm has a unique analytics tool called explorer which has the capability to slice and dice real-time data so marketers can make an informed decisions.
A/B testing: A performance marketing platform allows marketers to test various elements of the marketing campaigns, such as the landing pages and ad copy, to determine which performs better.
Ads management: This software allows advertisers to create, manage, and optimize ads across multiple channels and platforms.
Affiliate management: The ability to manage affiliate relationships and payments for affiliate marketing campaigns.
When using performance marketing software, businesses can make data-driven decisions to optimize campaigns and improve their return on investment (ROI).
Swaarm’s unique features make it the most desirable performance marketing platform on the market. These features include:
Alerts: If you make a small mistake or overlook a metric when setting up the campaign, your investment can go to waste. Swaarm’s alert system will nudge you if there is an issue with your campaign, allowing you to fix it immediately.
Workflows: Since you can automate manual tasks, you’ll spend less time setting up marketing campaigns. Once you set up the workflows, the software will automate jobs based on the conditions you have outlined in the system, saving you time and effort.
Ad fraud detection and prevention: Marketers can use optimization rules to check the traffic’s authenticity, ensuring that you only get high-quality traffic and discard traffic that falls outside the configured rules.
Contact us to learn more about Swaarm and how it can help you manage campaigns using our innovative performance marketing platform.
In conclusion
Performance marketing is a digital marketing strategy that drives measurable results or actions, such as sales, leads, clicks, or downloads. Instead of raising brand awareness or driving traffic to a website, performance marketing aims to generate a specific and measurable outcome that marketers can attribute to a particular marketing campaign or channel.
Performance marketing relies heavily on data and analytics to track and measure the success of campaigns and optimize them for better performance. By constantly testing and refining campaigns, agencies, networks, and advertisers can increase the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and achieve better returns on investment (ROI). A performance marketing platform like Swaarm can help marketers stay on top of their campaigns.
