With the current economic situation, more budget is moving online, and more budget is being allocated toward performance marketing. So what does that mean for marketers getting into the space for the first time?

First off, lets make sure we are clear on WHAT performance marketing is. Simply stated, performance marketing allows an advertiser to pay for results. If you’re a marketer looking for qualified traffic, leads, or customers, you’ll only pay for the results you seek.

In considering performance marketing for the first time, there are a few high level items to think about prior to getting your toes wet in the space. Its important to consider these items ahead of time to maximize the effectiveness of your campaign and minimize your brand risk.

1. 1. Work with someone you trust. The relationship you have with your platform and the platform’s reputation in the market is key to building high performance campaigns that deliver on your expectations. Work with people you trust and you will be able to have the kind of dialogue that builds brand while delivering bottom line results.
2. Work with a platform that has a vetted publisher base. The quality and integrity of the publishers on a platform will be reflected in the quality of your results. I cannot stress how important it is to have a group of publishers that you and your platform trust. Remember, in performance marketing, the platform you work with only gets paid when you, the marketer gets the results you seek—so the good ones will have the better publishers.
3. Work with someone who can help you with your creative, campaign “packaging”, and landing page optimization. These elements make the difference between success and failure in performance marketing. If you work with the right people, you can trust them to deliver the goods in a way that complies with your brand and delivers the results you seek. A campaign can always improve. The days of fire and forget are long gone. Work with someone who will help you evolve things to improve your results.
4. Educate yourself on the differences of performance pricing versus traditional impression pricing. Performance marketing is a direct response medium so your message and call to action has to reflect that reality in your creative. Today, there are no points for impressions–only the use of these traditional display-based media to effect a transaction of some sort. Its a good idea to understand these differences before embarking on a campaign, so call someone knows the space to help educate you. If the folks you call don’t have time to bring you up to speed, chances are you dont want to have a long-term relationship with them. (Feel free to call our head of Sales, Peter Ettenborough (978-819-4129), or any of our senior sales people: Julian Mossanen: (647-259-4946), Chantelle White: (917-675-6104), Mike Carney (647-259-4948), or Andy Hawkes (978-771-7800). They would be glad to help educate you and see how we can help!

Should you have any questions, feel free to contact me or any of the folks listed above. As an industry, we look forward to serving your needs! I can be reached at 917 512 1693.