If you want to spend some of your budget on digital advertising, you effectively have four options to choose from: Display advertising, social media advertising, search engine advertising — and performance marketing. Here’s a breakdown of those first three options:
Display Advertising
Banner ads, landing pages, pop-ups, videos, gifs — display advertising is essentially all the meldings of copy and images that appear on your screen as you browse the internet on your phone or laptop.
Social Media Advertising
Move those meldings of copy and images to social feeds like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube, and now we’re talking social ad spend (which frequently overlaps with influencer marketing).
Search Engine Advertising
Sometimes referred to as “paid advertising,” search engine advertising is three-line snippets of text at the top of the SERPs (marketing-speak for “search engine results pages”) with a green “Ad” icon next to it. This is the world of SEO, SEM, Google Ads, Yelp! reviews, and organic and earned media.
In all those ad strategies, companies usually pay out according to how many user impressions an ad nets — in other words, when someone views the ad. With performance marketing, though, brands only pay publishers when users complete a desired action, like clicking on the ad’s CTA, booking a session, completing a sale, downloading an ebook, and so on. Agencies might recommend a performance marketing campaign because it’s generally cost-effective. Here are some of the time-tested performance marketing strategies that often work well for my company, Mindgruve:
Define goals and metrics.
One of the complexities about marketing and analytics is that you can measure anything — and cherry-pick any measurement to make yourself feel good about your business decisions. So ask yourself at the outset of your performance marketing strategy: What are you trying to see? Once you understand the insights you want to unearth, you can make informed decisions regarding where to focus your energy.
Segment your audience.
You want eyeballs on your brand, but you do not want to hose the market with content. Figure out who you’re talking to. Identify the channels that they frequent. Targeting certain groups of customers with messages tailored to their interests can help you generate conversions and improve your ROI.
Collaborate with influencers.
Depending on the industry you’re in, you might consider networking with Insta stars and TikTok influencers who can help you appeal to new audiences and spread the good word about your brand.
Test and optimize.
Here’s the underlying question of any marketing campaign: Did it work? Performance marketing, like business writ large, is all about continuous improvement. Test your campaigns. Use the data you gather to hone your strategy and boost your results — again, depending on the results that you’re interested in producing.
Diversify your channels.
The sheer volume of channels where you can push out your content is mind-popping. Unless you have Coca-Cola’s marketing budget, you can’t conquer them all. But you can create a savvy marketing strategy that links up the right channels and mixes social media, email marketing, paid and organic search content, and other tactics in a way that makes them want to click into your site and download your products and services.
A solid performance marketing campaign is perfectly suited to push products and track results while keeping your costs in line. For young companies especially, this type of low-risk, cost-per-action marketing can help boost your ROI and drive dynamic growth.