Exploring the Different Branches of Performance Marketing

Performance marketing is a different type of marketing that one might expect from major corporations. While names such as Pepsi and Coke focus on branding, smaller companies harness the power of performance marketing to generate a specific action. There are, as you might expect, a variety of options when it comes to performance marketing. Each one delivers its own benefits and drawbacks, as well as a different measurable performance. Below are a few examples of performance marketing that represent different approaches and end results.

Pay Per Call

Pay Per Call is one of the fastest growing branches of performance marketing. Consumers are increasingly using a combination of online search and phone calls to research a product/service/company, and then call to complete a sale or schedule an appointment. Pay Per Call is the ideal means of performance marketing because it is easily measurable. Money invested in Pay Per Call ads is spent to generate calls to the business, with each call representing the measurable action in terms of performance marketing.

Read More: How Performance Marketing Can Boost Your Business

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click advertising has been around since the dawn of the Internet. Advertisers and brands originally used Pay Per Click merely to entice a click, regardless of the result in the end, to generate ad revenue. To its credit, Pay Per Click has evolved for the better as brands use this branch of performance marketing to generate traffic to a website or blog.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is a powerful tool in the 21st century, and with some 2 billion people using Facebook alone, social media offers a great chance to reach out to consumers with marketing tactics. Social media marketing can be a more difficult form of performance marketing to track, as brands need to decide what measurable action is desired. Does the company want to generate page follows or likes on individual posts? Or, is the focus on spreading brand awareness as measured through re-posts, shares, and re-Tweets?

Read More: Is Performance Marketing Worth Your Time?

Email Marketing

Email marketing is also a branch of performance marketing, but like social media marketing, brands need to focus in on the desired action and ensure that it is measurable. Email marketing can be used to generate sales by promoting special offers/coupons on products, as an example. In this way, the measurable action is the redemption of those coupons/offers on the given product.

Benefits to Performance Marketing

Regardless of the branch of performance marketing a brand uses, there are benefits to running a performance marketing campaign. The most obvious are the easy-to-track performances. When consumers call a business after engaging with a Pay Per Call campaign, that action is easily tracked and measurable in its value. Most performance marketing is also low risk. How so? Unlike other forms of advertising where money is paid up front, performance marketing requires payment only when a successful (measurable) action is taken.

Finally, performance marketing is focused on return on investment. Performance marketing gives power back to companies of all sizes, enabling them to reach their audience and sell products while protecting the bottom line. The only real question is, which branch of performance marketing is best for each business?

Learn More: 4 Tips to Improve the Performance of Your Pay Per Call Marketing