Do you ever feel like your marketing efforts are running a marathon but ending up at the snack table instead of the finish line?

If you’re nodding your head in agreement, you’re not alone. Many businesses struggle to see measurable results from their marketing campaigns, and this mostly happens when they forget to implement Performance Marketing. It’s basically the marketing equivalent of a CrossFit champion, always striving to do better, pushing for those extra reps, and delivering results that make other marketing methods look like they’re still stuck in P.E. class.

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“Performance marketing is a data-driven form of advertising in which brands pay only for the results they receive.” – Neil Patel

“Performance marketing is a digital marketing strategy that measures success based on specific, measurable outcomes, rather than just impressions or clicks.” – Rand Fishkin

Performance Marketing is simply just performance-based marketing. This is against the traditional way of paying for ads, as advertisers only pay when there is a completed conversion. There are two things you need to understand while performing this strategy: The Channel you’re going to use, and the Data you’re going to collect.

1. Select the Right Paid Channels:Performance Marketing begins when you invest the right amount of money behind a well-researched, industry-specific advertising channel. Make sure you define the goals you’re targeting- for example, to increase brand visibility, increase website traffic or make actual sales. Depending on your strategy needs, you can then decide whether you want to advertise on Social Media Platforms, Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Display OOH Ads, Banner Ads, or even Influencer and Content Marketing- the possibilities are endless. You can set your goals for clicks or conversions and pay accordingly, rather than emptying your pockets on advertising that does not yield results i.e. the Return on Investment (ROI).

2. Interpret the Collected Data: Analysis and tracking are essential to optimise campaigns in real time. This ability to efficiently use these resources results in promising outcomes. A few metrics to track your data across include Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Impression/Metric (CPM), Cost Per Lead (CPL), Cost Per Sale (CPS), and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). This data can help you measure your ROI. Performance marketing is like stand-up comedy. In case something is not working and the reaction from your audience isn’t as per your expectation, you can tweak your campaign on the go in real-time, and adjust the parameters on your selected paid channels as and when the audience reacts to it. Not only does this power-packed strategy help you acquire customers, but it also can help you retain them through consistent brand behaviour. This is a low-risk strategy as you’ll know exactly where your money is going and how much is coming back, and naturally, the Cost Per Parameter is lower while the ROI remains high. This gives you the freedom to further test other strategies that could give your brand the additional boost it needs.

If we had to give you an example of a famous Indian Brand which has been using Performance Marketing Strategies ever since its inception, it has to be Flipkart. They have always strived to be relevant and relatable, and for a Bollywood obsessed country- they make full use of celebrity endorsements on all their platforms. They are known to post content 2-3 times every single day and have recently crossed 4 million followers on Instagram, while they have more than 10 million followers on Facebook. Their speciality is product category-based content which helps them with Email and Influencer Marketing.

Flipkart knows that 75% of its audience is between the ages of 16-55. They use their data to customise and premarket content on each platform they’re advertising on. They’re also at the front seat when it comes to website optimisation and SEO with around 300 million visits in the past year and paid long-tail keyword search. With an amazing domain authority of 90, their Ahrefs analytics  display why they’re on top of their game.

They annually invest a chunk of their marketing budget on online Display advertisements, and Native OOH Banners at eye-catching spots around the country. One of their highly performing campaigns every year is the #BigBillionDays sale, and several layers of performance marketing strategies are used every year for the same. In 2022, this campaign bought Flipkart more than 5.2 million views with a CTR of 3%

If your marketing campaigns have been lounging around, maybe it’s time to give Performance Marketing a shot. Turn clicks into cash and transform your business with this data-centric and ROI-focused strategy. So let’s raise a dumbbell- I mean, a toast, to Performance Marketing, where marketing meets its personal trainer, and the results are anything but a joke.