Why Now is the Time to Focus on Performance Marketing

During times of crisis things can get a bit chaotic and uncertain. Not every one knows about how to make key decisions that present themselves. It’s possible that at some point maximising budget may makes it to the discussion table. Everything that is considered non-essential is made redundant and strategies advance towards acquiring the best result possible with limited resources. 

One of the first things teams analyze is their marketing budget and deciding what and what isn’t essential. Then comes the dilemma: where exactly should my budget be focused? That begins the age-old conversation: “should my organization focus on brand awareness or brand performance?”. While there are advocates for both sides, during times of crisis it is always best to focus on performance.

Understanding the Difference

To understand the difference between performance and brand marketing, we must discuss the sales funnel. While the sales funnel has seen a number of variations and adaptations over the years, even in its infancy it could help differentiate exactly where awareness marketing targets consumers and where performance marketing campaigns begin. 

Way before digital marketing, computers, or even the automobile, E. St. Elmo Lewis developed the sales funnel to help companies understand the purchase process of consumers. At the top of this funnel sat awareness. First a consumer becomes aware that a brand or a product exists. After becoming aware, the consumer learns the benefits of the product, which drives them to desire it. Finally, at the bottom of the funnel which leads to the sale is action, where the consumer makes the decision to purchase the product.

Times are a bit different in the 21st century. With all the tools at the disposal of B2B buyers, the funnel has become quite complicated. Awareness has shifted from informing a buyer about your product to building a relationship between a consumer and a brand. 

That means that there is no offering a product and there definitely is no direct sale. The goal with awareness marketing is that by building the attractiveness of your brand and creating loyal fans, your organization will see long term revenue.

This differs quite largely from performance marketing. Some would describe it as numbers and immediate results. But it is actually much deeper than just that. A well thought out and executed performance campaign can not only result in immediate KPI’s, but can be beneficial to brand building in the process. It’s offering a product and creating desire, but also maintaining an organization’s brand identity to help reinforce the brand.

Where Brand Awareness Fails

The best marketing strategy includes both performance and brand marketing. Think about it, why should someone come to buy your product or download your app if they have never heard of it? Sometimes, your product really does have that special something, but it always helps to have your brand known. However, there are no immediate results in raising your brand awareness.

Another factor to consider when looking at awareness marketing, is the state of media. Oftentimes to build awareness, your team has to engage in things like content marketing and intense PR. But sometimes the topics media value are just not kind to your brand. If the entire world is talking about a pandemic threatening the world, then why would a journalist write an article about your brand? Better yet, why would someone even read that article? This could mean that all that time and money spent into raising your brand awareness could be all for nothing, unless you manage to stay relevant as a brand.

How Performance can Bridge the Gap

Some believe that if your brand has a limited awareness, performance marketing can feel like trying to put jeans on with wet legs. However, with the right strategy this doesn’t have to be the case. Ultimately, if you have a product that is desirable to consumers, all you need to do is push it a bit. Think back to the funnel, desire is the last step before action. If you want mobile app downloads, then use performance marketing to show off what makes your app a requirement not a luxury. 

However, accurate performance marketing is more than just pushing the product to a wide array of people. This brings back the classic saying, “right person, right place, right time”. Before the days of digital marketing, the tip was used for many things including the art of upselling in stores. If someone was buying a TV, why not offer a VHS player. Then when digital marketing had its boom, it became about how to replicate this. 

This all changed when the world was introduced to data driven performance marketing and machine learning. Every time someone engages in internet activity, their data is stored. If you Google something, that data is stored in Google’s database. If you browse the web and click on a page to look at a specific product, that also gets stored in the websites database. Understanding this data and leveraging it has opened the door to offering products to the right people, at the right time. 

John Wanamaker has a great famous quote, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Fortunately for performance marketing, you can know exactly how many leads you generate out of your ads. By doing this, you can track your success and failures and adjust accordingly. 

In App-Performance Marking

Today’s average consumer checks their phone about 80 times a day and millennials double that. The increased usage of mobile is a huge shift in our personal lives and has reflected in the business sector as well. That’s why you cannot forget to include mobile marketing in your budget.

As the prevalence of mobile phones continues to rise, so does the number of downloads of apps for the phones. In 2019, there were 204 billion app downloads, with TikTok alone garnering 614 million. 

The increased usage of mobile apps has made it easier to offer targeted ads. Once again it goes back to understanding the data behind an app user. What have they been viewing and what are their interests? Once machines have learned this, they can offer user-relevant advertisements directly in an app. This leads directly to results without having to wait. When fine tuning and focusing your marketing budget, this is an extremely effective option. 

Creative Clicks specializes in app performance marketing based on CPM, CPI and CPE. They have partnered with the likes of Amazon, Alibaba, Tiktok, Apple TV and plenty of
more.

Would you like to know more about our services? Feel free to reach out to us!