The Shift to Performance Based Advertising for Retailers
How Retailers Can Boost ROI and Reduce Waste
For brick-and-mortar retailers committed to growth through ecommerce, it's time to consider online marketing options where the advertiser pays only for specific actions by their target audience. Performance-based campaigns connect ad spend directly to measurable customer actions, like making a purchase. This model fosters a partnership between the retailer and the marketer, with both benefiting when the marketing is successful.
How My Performance-Based Marketing Works
Understanding Performance Marketing
Performance marketing starkly contrasts with traditional digital marketing methods, incurring costs only when defined actions are completed. If you've been frustrated by advertising agencies that profit despite poor performance, you'll appreciate how performance advertising aligns costs with results. Here, marketers' efforts are measured by specific performance metrics used to fine-tune campaigns. The goal is to drive quality traffic from your target audience to your sales funnel at precisely the right time.
Search and display advertising for performance marketing is strategically executed to generate leads or purchases without unnecessary expenditure, aligning campaign goals with the retailer's goals. Since performance advertising relies on detailed tracking for the marketer to be paid, it is more effective at adjusting based on real-time data, since neither the marketer nor the retailers care to waste money on ineffective advertising.
This also addresses what most retailers think is a conflict of interest in traffic-based advertising, where marketers charge a percentage of ad budget. Doing so causes a disincentive to improve performance because the marketer profits from spending as much budget as possible. While the benefits of performance-based marketing are marketing campaign earns the marketer more money when it spends less to produce the same result.
What Do I Mean by Pay-On-Performance?
Definition: Performance Based Marketing
Performance-based marketing is a digital marketing strategy where advertisers pay marketing companies only when specific actions are achieved. This ensures that the ad spend is directly linked to measurable outcomes, aligning marketing expenses with actual returns.
Comparison of Performance Based Marketing vs. Traditional Digital Marketing Models
In traditional marketing models, advertisers pay for ad placements and exposure, targeting a broad audience without guarantees on performance. In contrast, performance-based marketing demands results before payment is made, making it a more accountable and cost-effective method. Performance Based Marketing ties the advertisers' pay directly to the success of the campaign, focusing efforts on reaching the target audience effectively and optimizing the performance marketing strategy to meet specific business goals.
Core Components of Performance Based Marketing
Performance Based Digital Advertising Focused on Retail Ecommerce
Performance-based marketing primarily revolves around Cost-Per-Action (CPA), Cost-Per-Lead (CPL), and Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS). With a focus on retail ecommerce, I emphasize ROAS as the key metric, as it directly reflects the cost-efficiency of ad spend in relation to the revenue generated from those ads.
Performance Based Marketing Terms
- CPA (Cost-Per-Action) ensures that payment is only required when specific actions, such as a purchase or subscription, are completed.
- CPL (Cost-Per-Lead) is centered around payment for each potential customer contact generated, which can be crucial for building a pipeline for converting prospects to clients. I would use this metric for a service client that doesn't measure revenue through its site. For example, a home renovations company that doesn't have an e-commerce store.
- ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) is my preferred metric, as it quantifies the direct return from investments in digital advertising, especially through channels like Google Ads and other digital marketing platforms where advertising results are transparent and measurable.
How Performance Based Marketing Works
The mechanics of performance marketing involve setting clear and measurable campaign goals that align with the overall marketing strategy. This typically includes deploying targeted paid ads and optimizing marketing campaigns to people who have a strong purchase intent. Good performance marketing examples often leverage high-performing channels, such as paid search ads and social media platforms, utilizing detailed tracking and analytics to refine campaign performance continually.
By focusing on performance marketing channels, a campaign goal becomes a critical metric tied to the marketer's income. This approach encourages the elimination of underperforming campaigns, ensuring that marketing campaigns are not only cost-effective but also directly aligned to revenue goals.
Why Performance Based Marketing Matters for Your Business
The Cost Efficiency of Precision in Advertising Spend
Performance marketing ensures precision in advertising spend, with retailers paying only for successful outcomes. This cost-efficient model guarantees that the marketing budget is strictly allocated to the best-performing campaigns. Since performance-based campaigns that yield maximum results also earn the performance marketers more revenue, this approach minimizes waste while targeting highly measurable outcomes like purchases. Unlike traditional brand marketing or broad ad campaigns focused on maximizing traffic, performance-based marketing directly ties every dollar to a specific action like a purchase.
Results Based Advertising Aligns with Business Goals
Performance marketing aligns seamlessly with business goals. By tying advertiser revenue retailer revenue, the resulting marketing strategies and audience targeting options are constantly optimized for success. Performance marketing ensures that the marketers' efforts are concentrated on finding potential customers who are most likely to convert instead of spending the whole ad budget regardless of results.
This approach not only streamlines the use of the marketing budget but also enhances the ability to generate results by leveraging other initiatives like content marketing and incorporate them into ads.
Adaptability of Campaigns
The adaptable nature of performance marketing allows for swift adjustments in marketing campaigns, making it possible to respond to changes in consumer behaviour and market conditions efficiently. Since the marketer's income is tied to the desired results produced by your campaigns, adjustments to accommodate changes in performance based on the season, algorithm changes or competition are much more likely to happen quickly. This flexibility is critical in targeting specific audiences and refining marketing efforts to keep advertising aimed toward the most effective outcomes.
Advantages of Performance Based Over Traditional Methods
The Increased Accountability of Results-Driven Campaigns
Performance marketing elevates accountability by ensuring marketers are compensated only when they achieve measurable results aligned with business objectives. This model necessitates that all campaign elements work towards clearly defined goals, enhancing the transparency and effectiveness of marketing investments.
Better Tracking and Analytics of Campaign Performance
The use of tracking and analytics is critical to performance based agencies, while it is unfortunately common for marketing created my traditional agencies to not even track revenue, and instead focus on other key metrics and track performance using impressions, clicks and click-through-rate.
Direct Correlation with Your Revenue
Performance marketing directly ties marketing efforts that drives website traffic to sales, making it easy to weigh the cost of advertising to a web page in relation to the measurable results derived from that website traffic. If you can identify substantial campaign results that mirror business objectives from certain channels or ad formats, it becomes simple to optimize for the best returns.
Leveraging Performance Marketing for Enhanced Retail Success
Performance marketing stands out as a transformative approach, fostering a long-term mutually beneficial partnership with marketers, driving actual sales and ensuring that every dollar spent is an investment towards measurable ROI. This method aligns closely with an overall strategy focused on data-driven decisions, allowing retailers & marketers to gather data and then use it effectively for the best outcome.
The benefits of performance marketing are clear: it not only provides a framework for accountability and optimized campaign goals but also ensures that advertising efforts are directly correlated with sales outcomes. By integrating performance marketing, retailers can move away from traditional forms of advertising, focusing instead on strategies that are proven to drive sales and maximize the effectiveness of each dollar spent.
Since the alternative is expensive and frustrating, retailers aiming for long-term growth from online channels should seek out marketers who embrace a pay-for-results model as part of their overall strategy, to align themselves with their clients' goals and make better data-driven decisions. Performance marketing fits seamlessly into modern advertising and offers a powerful new approach for maximizing campaign results to drive meaningful engagement with your target audiences.