In advertising, you must be curious, malleable, and willing to take calculated risks. What once was a groundbreaking campaign is now old news, downgraded to white noise amongst competing messages. In the digital era, advertising campaigns have even shorter lifespans, sacrificed on the altar of endless distractions and banner blindness.
To be effective today, leaders should focus their digital advertising sights on performance marketing, which demands measurable results. You must build a results-driven marketing strategy that prioritizes efficiency, flexibility, and accountability and utilizes the best of today’s digital advertising tools.
1. Align Results With Actions
Performance marketing equips advertisers with actionable data that can be tracked and measured in real time. Gone are the days of waiting for the monthly metrics deck to be compiled; Modern performance marketing can be tracked across a dashboard that reports real-time data, which can be used right away. Benchmark your current click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on ad spend to set a baseline. Analyze what’s behind the actions to learn what to replicate and what to adjust over time.
Collaborate with a top-tier performance marketing agency to identify which strategies can offer the best results for your business. A direct-to-consumer brand might find the most success with social media advertising while others may opt for native advertising. An agency partner can unlock access to the most effective and actionable strategies for your business. With their guidance, you can bring your strategies to market more efficiently and achieve results.
Use real-time reporting through your dashboard to influence immediate campaigns and correct those that are running. Generally, you can halt poor-performing campaigns in the digital space, adjusting and re-starting them instead of losing out on opportunities. Use reporting data to encourage your team as they build new strategies. Use data to project sales, manufacturing needs, and shipping demands throughout your business, improving your processes and the customer experience.
2. Invest in Positive Actions, Not Eyeballs
In performance marketing, investments are typically connected to actions like clicking an ad or completing a form. If customers don’t complete an action, your company likely won’t pay for their views. Conversely, outdated, broad-reaching advertising like newspaper ads require payment for placement, not results. When you leverage digital data, you can identify high-potential opportunities and structure ad buys with positive actions.
Consider what action you want customers to take based on your goals and what you can support after they act. Some conversions can happen with a few clicks, like purchasing a chic jewelry set or innovative cosmetic product. In these cases, the positive action is completing a purchase. Other engagements may be more involved, like completing a questionnaire for a direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical brand. The buying process requires more time in the consideration phase, so digital advertising spending may be completed upon form submission.
If your desired action results in added demands for your team, use logged actions to plan accordingly. In the pharmaceutical brand example, the next step may be meeting with a licensed provider. When click rates increase, convey this information to your team to ensure they’re ready to help close the sale. Without this real-time data, you may risk being under-staffed and losing sales or over-staffing and losing money many times over. When you invest in actions, you can devise an effective performance marketing strategy that earns results.
3. Target the Right Customers, Whenever and Wherever They Are
Trends shift constantly, making it challenging to pinpoint where your customers may be. However, when best practices of performance marketing are used, leaders can leverage data to target specific audiences. Build customer profiles based on known data and performance marketing tactics to target highly convertible clients.
Identify the channel of choice for your customer base by analyzing their actions instead of your assumptions. Use the data your campaigns collect to build targeted messages based on demographics, platform, and timing. Over time, you’ll begin to cycle through campaigns to further refine your criteria and improve your return on investment. A parent shopping for their children’s school clothes may show the most browsing data during their lunch hour. However, their buying habits may shift across channels, completing their check-out on their personal laptop at home.
This type of data gathering and analysis is essential for customizing your targeted marketing. In this scenario, you’d want to launch cross-channel advertising that follows user behavior no matter their channel. Without the power of analytics, you run the risk of losing once-engaged, but now very busy customers. With performance marketing, your campaigns can support the aims of your clients, delivering on-target messaging that closes the deal. Together, this data will allow you to invest your time, creativity, and money toward tools, campaigns, and strategic relationships efficiently.
Build a Results-Driven Digital Advertising Strategy
When your digital advertising efforts are influenced by real market performance, your success rate increases and return on investment soars. Instead of guessing what will work, know what will work specific to your client base and industry. Leverage the wealth of data the digital landscape can provide and your digital advertising will be more effective and impactful. When you do, your performance marketing approach will deliver measurable, cost-effective, and targeted digital advertising results.
