Starting A Performance Marketing Program

Is your company thinking of starting a performance marketing program? If the concept is new to your marketing team, it’s critical to understand the basics of performance marketing. During Performance Marketing Insights in New York City today, Peter Klein of Media Whiz gave an overview of what CMOs need to know about Performance Marketing. In his presentation Peter defined what performance marketing is, why it’s beneficial for your company, and how to get started. Here are a few key takeaways from Peter’s presentation that can help anyone starting their own performance marketing program:

Performance marketing basics

Peter explained that it’s critical to know that “performance marketing is the smartest online advertising investment. It’s no longer nice to have, but necessary to have” as part of an overall marketing strategy. Performance marketing includes advertisers, affiliates, and the networks that sit in-between them. Advertisers pay for performance, while affiliates, who are paid to deliver a specific action, promote the advertiser through various channels (e.g. PPC, SEO, Social Media). The network then acts as a bank, tracking system, client support, media planner, and compliance team.

Benefits of performance marketing

One of the key benefits of performance marketing is the fact that the industry is incredibly lucrative (currently estimated at $25 billion/year) and offers big gains for small investments. Peter suggested that advertisers can invest just $10,000 initially for a strong performance marketing campaign in just one or two channels – and still see a real ROI. There is also the opportunity to push campaigns to market faster than other types of marketing.

Potential pitfalls

Like all types of marketing, there are potential pitfalls, including placement transparency, the potential to compromise brand integrity, the potential to fail to comply with media and government regulations, problems with affiliate fraud, and the constant need to deliver a great consumer experience. However, Peter said these problems are easy to avoid, as there are dozens of tools available to help you avoid these problems, including ones that help monitor affiliate fraud.

Five steps to ROI success

If you are strongly considering starting an affiliate program, Peter suggested there are 5 easy steps for ROI success.

1) Define your goal and whether you want to generate leads or sales.
2) Choose the right affiliate network.
3) Pick only a few channels to begin with (e.g. affiliate, display, social)
4) Establish your budget, KPIs, and target demographic.
5) Monitor your campaign.

As Peter said, “the work the doesn’t stop once the campaign launches,” and it’s necessary to ensure the budget is spent properly and you continue to adhere to brand guidelines. If you do set up an affiliate program, continuing to optimize your campaign will help ensure you see real success.

Thanks to Media Whiz for providing the slide deck for Peter’s presentation: The CMO’s Guide to Performance Marketing.

If you have started your own performance marketing program, what suggestions do you have for beginners? Share your suggestions in the comments.

Like this article? Sign up for our blog digest emails.