There are hundreds of marketing strategies in use today, but one tried-and-true method continues to stand out: performance marketing, through which organizations use various platforms to reach their targeted audience and only pay for conversions. The result is less money wasted on ads that don’t result in consumer engagement.
Performance Marketing in Practice
First and foremost, what is performance marketing?
In its simplest terms, performance marketing involves setting specific objectives for an ad’s performance, like clicks to a website or the number of successful product sales. If the ad results in the desired consumer action, the organization pays a specific amount for that conversion. The company won’t pay for ads that don’t result in a suitable lead, even if customers see them online or through other mediums.
Several well-known performance marketing methods include pay-per-click (PPC) ads, affiliate and influencer marketing, dynamic marketing, and social media marketing. Each method has its own benefits and drawbacks.
How Data Impacts Your Performance Marketing Results
As with any marketing strategy, you’ll want to closely examine the results of your performance marketing campaign. Even if you’re only paying for qualified conversions, you may still be leaving potential leads on the table if you don’t have a proper performance marketing strategy in place.
How you use the resulting data will depend on your performance marketing strategy, so let’s look at a few examples:
PPC Advertisements
With a PPC advertising strategy, you target specific keywords your audience typically uses when looking for products or services like yours via online search engines. Your PPC ad will appear as a link, followed by a short message that encourages viewers to click said link for more information.
When designing a PPC strategy, you’ll pay careful attention to your keywords. Those that typically lead to a sale or qualified lead are more expensive than those with different intent. For instance, someone searching for “Caribbean cruise deals” probably intends to go on a cruise in the near future, whereas searching for “sunset time in Jamaica” likely carries a different purpose.
High-dollar keywords can improve your sales, but they’ll come at a hefty cost, so you’ll want to find inexpensive keywords that drive conversions. Doing so may require diligent research and extra creativity, but if you’re successful in your endeavor, you’ll find your business lowering its costs-per-acquisition while still increasing leads.
You should regularly compare your results across different PPC strategies to find which brings in the best results for the lowest cost. You can continually refine your efforts to find other keywords that lower your advertising spend while continuing to encourage conversions.
Connected TV Advertisements
Connected TV (CTV) advertisements are ads that are run on internet-connected TVs and streaming services. Though they are a relatively new medium, that doesn’t mean they are ineffective. On the contrary, CTV is one of the fastest-growing advertising strategies out there.
According to connected TV trends, over 80% of consumers watch CTV ads when they appear, and advertisers are definitely taking notice, heavily incorporating CTV into their marketing strategies. CTV ads allow marketers to systematically target specific audiences, something that is very difficult (if not outright impossible) to do through traditional commercials.
You can show your ads exclusively to people already familiar with your brand, increasing the chances of conversion. For instance, you can display video ads on CTVs specifically to people who previously shopped with you or interacted with your site in another way.
You can also target people with similar behavioral and demographic characteristics as you learn more about your customers from first-party data. For instance, if you notice a significant portion of your audience watches travel documentaries, is over the age of 35, and lives in Vermont, you could target people with those same qualities.
To see the greatest benefits from CTV advertisements, you’ll need to rely on your first-party data from your other marketing platforms, such as your website, social media accounts, and emails. You’ll want to review the results of your connected TV advertisements and compare them as you refine your strategies, and over time, you’ll decrease your cost per acquisition while increasing qualified leads.
Data Is Critical for Any Performance Marketing Strategy
Whether you’re using your data to determine your desired target audience, research valuable keywords, or review your campaign results, you can’t deny its importance. Relevant data increases the effectiveness of your advertising strategies and helps you determine the best way to connect with your audience cost-effectively.
